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'VI drastic social revolution, "tjip ntafi^vc
pressures everywhere in Latin 'America for
nodal justice, the cold war, and an extraor-
dinary young man have given the Cuban
Revolution an importance itnequaled by any
event in the Western Hemisphere since the
Wars o[ Independence"

HEEBERT L. MAiTHEWS

It is doubtful If any American today has a
more comprehensive understanding of the
Cuban Revolution and of what Fidelismo
means in terms of our over-all relations with
Uitin America than Herbert L. Matthews,
noted correspondent, a New York Times edi-
tor* and author of "one of the most important
l?ookM on modern Hpain" • • THK YOKK AND
tiiK AKROWK.

'MournaHsts," Mr. Matthews nays, "rarely
make history; at bent we provide material
for history, It was an accident that my inter-
view with Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maootra
on February 17, 19f>7» should have proved
so Important. There wan a story to bo got, a
eei worship to be broken, I got it and I did it

and it so hapju'as that iwilbrr (\iba nor
the UniUni SlaJr;; us tfointf to be the name
again,"

1*111-; (UtftAN STORY telln why this is no. If,
like Itw book on Hpitin, it is "pewonal in the
twHt newwpap<T wnsts*" there is no mote
forthright and truthful way it roukl have
Invn written* When Mr, Muithews broken the
BfttJjMtJi cK»wpira<*y trf nilenco about (/astro
and hw guerrilla lighters, wh<»n what he, said
w«u' itrwng U* take place actually inappeiitd
(ctuitttutcd <>a back flap)

JVu'/.vf Ih'Mf.H I Willwm tttn1 t'li'tline Ifarnn

972*91
Mat-thews

Cuban grtory

61-23360

Kansas city public library

Kansas city, missouri

Books will be issued only

on presentation of library card,
Please report lost cards and

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Card holders are responsible for

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checked out on their cards. . - •

THE CUBAN STORY

Books by Herbert L. Matthews

The Cuban Story (1961)

The Yoke and the Arrows ( 1956; revised edition, 1961 )
Assignment to Austerity (with Nantie Matthews) ( 1950 )

The Education of a Correspondent ( 1946)
The Fruits of Fascism (1943)

Two Wars and More to Come ( 1938)

Eyewitness in Abyssinia (1937)

Herbert L. Matthews

The Cuban Story

GEORGE BRAZILLER

NEW YORK 1961

For information, address the publisher;

George Braziller, Inc.
215 Furk Avomw South

New York 3, N. Y.

of Congress Catalog Card Number:

The quotation on page 137 from Eric Sevardd's t'ohmm in
the New York Post is used with (lie pcamiission of ll»e Hal!

Syndicate, Inc.

KIH8T Fill NT INC

Trbtfed in the United S fates af America

To Eric and Bobbie

Acknowledgment is due, as always, to The New
York Times in whose service all my information
was gatJwred. Some material from a series of
three lectures for the Third Annual Lectures in
History at the City College of New York in March,
1961, to also been used.

Contents

ONE ; The Siena Maestra Story 15

TWO : The Insurrection 45

TBBEE ; The Revolution 89

FOUK : Fidel Castro 133

FIVE : The Hemisphere 185

six : The United States 231

SEVEN : Journalism 281

Index 313

THE CUBAN STORY

CHAPTER ONE

The Sierra Maestra Story

JOURNALISTS BARELY make history. This is not our function.
We are the chroniclers of our times; at best we provide
material for history.

It was an accident that my interview with Fidel Castro
in the Sierra Maestra on February 17, 1957, should have
proved so important. There was .a story to be got, a cen-
sorship to be broken. 1 got it and I did it— and it so hap-
pens that neither Cuba nor the United States is going to
be the same again.

I am not accepting, for myself or for The New Jork
Time®* either blame or credit for having started Fidel
Castro on his meteoric rise to fame and power. He was a
man of destiny who would somehow have made his mark,
sooner or later. Cuba was ripe for revolution.

The United States had a reckoning to pay for past
policies. What Adlai Stevenson had called **the revolution
of rising expectations" was exerting dangerous pressures

THE CUBAN STOBY

throughout Latin America, And the world was ready to
come in on us, on our Western Hemisphere, safe for so
long, still untouched by the cold war,
A bell tolled in the jungles of the Sierra Macstra that

gray, sodden dawn, but how or why should a newspaper-
man, out after a scoop, know it?

I have never done a story that gave me more profes-
sional satisfaction. From die technical point of view, all I
claim credit for is having interpreted what 1 saw and heard
correctly, for having realized that the extraordinary young
man pouring his heart out to me in whispers for three
hours was the one around whom the hopes and passions
of Cuba would gather to a flood tide of victory,

Fidel Castro has flair. He needed publicity in the strict
sense of calling public attention to himself, Having studied
his country's history he must have known the remarkable
use to which the Cuban rebel General Mdximo G6xnez
had put the attention he was able to get from the Amer-
ican newspapers in the insurrection of 139*5-98. "Without
a press we shall get nowhere/' General G6mez had said.
With a press he got American intervention*

Without a press Fidel Castro was a hunted outlaw, lead-
ing a small band of youths in a remote jungle area of
eastern Cuba, Isolated and ineffectual. He was believed
to be dead by most Cubans (even General Batista thought
him dead) and none except a small group in his 26th of
July Movement could be sure that he was alive*

His band was surrounded by Government troops. There
was a rigid censorship. The odds against the rebels scorned
insuperable, but Fidel Castro was never dismayed by

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

odds. Look at him today, confidently embarked on a war
to the finish with the United States 1 He has a supreme
faith— in himself, only himself.

He had landed at a swampy stretch of the western
coast of Oriente Province, below Niquero, with eighty-
one men, on December 2, 1956. The leaky sixty-two-foot
yacht, Granma, had sailed from Mexico eight days before.
( The true spelling of the name was "Granma" but it was
always pronounced and usually spelled "Gramma.") The
departure was hasty, for the Mexican authorities were
after him. There was little food; the boat— which could
comfortably accommodate no more than a dozen men-
was dreadfully overcrowded; the Granma's engines were
bad.

Everything seemed to go wrong. It had been arranged
that his 26th of July followers in Santiago de Cuba would
rise on November 30, the day Fidel and his band were
supposed to land. There was a brave, but of course, futile
uprising on November 30, with Fidel far out to sea.

In a typically flamboyant gesture, Fidel had announced
that lie was coming before the end of the year, so Batista's
men were on the lookout for him. The yacht could not be
unloaded in the swampy ground and all the equipment
was lost,

The eighty-two men landed safely, but only a dozen,
including Fidel, his younger brother, Raul Castro, and
the Argentine doctor who had joined them in Mexico,
Ernesto ( Che ) Guevara, escaped into the mountain jungle
whose name is now so famous— the Sierra Maestra. It took

THE CUBAN STOEY

a Fidel Castro to convert such a complete disaster into a
triumph.

It was given out—and widely believed— that Fidel, him-
self, had been killed. The United Press even had told
where he was burled, and stuck to its story until my inter-
view was published months later.

For the Cuban people, Fidel was a myth, a legend, a
hope, but not a reality. He had to come to life, and like
General Gomez, he must have been saying to himself,
"without a press we shall get nowhere/'

Toward the last week of January, 1957, a survivor of the
eighty-two, Ren6 Rodriguez, arrived in Havana with a
message for the acting chief of the 20th of July Movement
in the capital, Faustino F6rez. Rodriguez said that Fidel
would like to see a foreign correspondent— not a Cuban
correspondent, for the censorship was on, and Fidel never
trusted the Cuban, press, anyway*

A Havana University student leader was present at the
meetibag— Javier P&zos, son of Felipe Puzo»s, economist,
banker and a former president of the National Bank of
Cuba. (Father and son are examples of the best type of
Cuban citizen and patriot, The father has for many months
been one of the Cuban exile leaders seeking to overthrow
the Castro regime; the son remained a loyal Fidelista. }

Rodriguez's instructions did not contain concrete de-
tails as to the way a meeting could be arranged* Fidel was
to send further instructions, because his situation in the
Sierra at that time was so precarious that he* himself, did
not foaow how he would be able to manage the interview.
It was typical of Fidel that he first decided what he

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

wanted to do and then had no doubts that he would do it,
however impossible it seemed.

Faustino Perez delegated Javier Pazos to make the
necessary contacts, and since Javier's father was already
actively cooperating with the 26th of July Movement, the
son sought his help. The only foreign correspondent Felipe
Pazos knew personally was Mrs. R. Hart (Ruby) Phillips
of The New Jork Times, He went to see her at the Times
office on Refugio Alto and explained his problem.

From that moment, the lives of a certain number of
Cubans were in the hands of Ruby Phillips and a little
later, of me and my wife Nancie. Edward (Ted) Scott of
the Havana Times and the National Broadcasting Com-
pany was consulted the first day by Ruby, as he shared
the Times office and was knowledgeable and discreet.

*1 must say that this was one of the best projects I have
ever been informed of, with respect to security," Ted
Scott wrote me long afterwards. "I am sure you did not
know that I was informed of what was going on and no
one else in Ruby*s organization knew what you and
Nancie were conspiring to do.

"I saw you minutes before you left for the hills and said
'Buen viajer or something like that. I remember you and
Nancie looking quickly at each other as if to say, "What
does the fat bastard mean by that? Does he know what
we are doing?* "

Americans had no conception in those last two years
of the Batista dictatorship of the fierceness and viciousness
with which the General was fighting back against the
terrorism and the rising wave of revolutionary opposition*

THE CUBAN STOBY

Death for plotters was not only the normal rale; in cases
like this torture always came first, since the police would
want to extract whatever information they could get. It
was going to be necessary to exercise the utmost discretion
and to keep down to an absolute minimum those who
knew anything about the venture.

The last place to get the slightest inkling of what was
happening had to be the American Embassy, whose Am-
bassador, Arthur Gardner, was closely identified and very
friendly with the dictator, President Fulgencio Batista.
Except for Cuban Government circles and the American
and Cuban business community, Gardner was hated by
the Cubans, No word, therefore, was breathed about the
project to him or to any member of the Embassy staff. In
fact, the only foreigners who knew anything about the
project were Ruby and Ted, until the story broke in The
Times. The only Cubans let in on it were those who took
an active part in organizing and carrying through the
plan. Knowing Cubans as I did, it was a miracle that the
secret was kept and the elaborate project carried off with-
out a hitch.

On the journalistic side, this was an operation that had
to be done by an outsider coming in to get the story and
going out to write it. This eliminated Ruby and Ted, who
were resident correspondents. By coincidence, I had writ-
ten Ted telling him that my wife and I were going to
Havana in a few weeks. I had been getting reports of con-
siderable ferment and discontent, and was intrigued by
the mystery of Fidel Castro, whose name kept cropping
up in persistent reports that he was not dead, as the Gov-

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

eminent had announced and everybody seemed to believe.

Fidel had been a heroic figure, especially for the youth
o£ Cuba, ever since the suicidal attack he had led on the
Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953.
It was from this incident that the 26th of July Movement
got its name.

A message from Ruby Phillips to Emanuel R. Freedman,
our Foreign Editor, simply suggesting that I get to Havana
as soon as possible, took me and Nancie down there in a
few days. Ruby had had a talk in Felipe Pazos' office with
Ren6 Rodriguez, who was attended by two fierce-looking
bodyguards. Javier Pazos and Faustino P6rez, who was
being hunted by the police, were also present.

The day after our arrival I had a meeting in the Times
office with Felipe Pazos and his son. I asked Felipe in 1960
to give me his recollections of the whole incident. In con-
nection with our first meeting he wrote:

"I remember your asking me whether I had met Fidel,
whether I believed him alive and what did I think of the
contention that Fidel had abandoned his men at Moncada,
fleeing for his life. My answers were no to the first and
third, and yes to the second. I remember telling you that
I had been strongly inclined to believe in his death (in
spite of the personal testimony of Faustino P&rez to the
contrary: I thought him sworn with all the others to hide
the truth) and that the first convincing indication I had
had of his being alive, which I now believed, was the
message that he wanted to see a foreign correspondent,
With regard to the story of his betraying his men at Mon-
cada, I told you that if he had done this, he would not

THE CUBAN STORY

have kept the fanatical loyalty that he seemed to inspire
in his men.

**After that, I asked whether you would send for some-
one from New York, and you answered that you, yourself,

would go. Without sufficient care not to show my surprise,
I asked whether you were apt at mountain climbing, and
you just repeated dryly, but softly, that you would go."*

As if any newspaperman would pass up an opportunity
like that! Felipe Pazos could not have known what makes
a journalist tick, A newspaperman who will run a big risk
for a mediocre story is a fool; one who will not run a big
risk for a big story should go into the public relations
business.

The account was picked up at this point by Javier
Pazos, who likewise wrote me his recollections in 1960*
A name comes in here which was not mentioned before—
Liliam Mesa, The young, attractive Liliam, who comes
from a well-to-do, upper class Havana family, was a
fanatical member of the 26th of July Movement, typical of
the young women who risked— and sometimes lost— their
lives in the insurrection. The extent to which the women
of Cuba were caught up in the passion of the rebellion
was extraordinary, for like aH Latin women they were
brought up to sheltered, non-public and non-political
lives. Liliam posed as Faustino's wife on our trip to Oriente
Province. We baew them simply as "Luis" and "Marta."

"More or less coinciding with these events,** Javier Pazos
wrote, "another messenger had come from ManzaniUo
requesting Faustino's presence in the Sierra and giving the
date on which the interview would take place, plus the

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

necessary contacts in ManzamUo. For the first time since
he had landed, due to the disposition of Batista's troops
and the revolutionary organization of the Manzanillo zone,
Fidel was in a position to hold a meeting with aU the
national leaders of the revolutionary movement. He thus
wanted to use this opportunity for, besides seeing the
foreign correspondent, a talk for the first time since he had
landed with Frank Pais Garcia, Faustino P6rez, Armando
Hart, Vilma Espin and Hayd^e Santamaria, on questions
concerning the general strategy of the movement.

"After I saw you, the coordination of everything else
was very simple. Faustino had only to mate sure that some
arms we had just received were properly hidden and we
would leave by car (Liliam Mesa, Faustino and I) start-
ing from his hide-out, picking up you and your wife at the
Sevilla Bfltmore Hotel and continuing to Manzanillo. My
presence was due, primarily, to the fact that Faustino
wanted me to help him convince Fidel that a second front
be opened in Las Villas province with the armament we
had just received in La Habana. This was later discarded
because of the more realistic necessity of re-enforcing
Fidel's troop with everything the movement could afford.
I must confess that within myself, I had doubts about
Fidel's presence in the Sierra until we saw him/*

Nancie and I had been told to stand by on Thursday
and Friday— February 14 and 15. The precise time Javier
called me at the office and told me to get ready in an hour
was five thirty on Friday afternoon. The moment was
fixed, when we looked back afterwards by my wife, who
remembered that she had started to do her hair when I

THE CUBAN STOBY

called and had to stop. From the beginning I had had the
idea of taking Nancie along as "camouflage,"

At the hotel I told them we were going on a fishing trip,
and I had bought suitable clothes for such a purpose. At
the office. Ruby told her two Cuban assistants that we
were going to Santiago de Cuba for a few days to see
what the situation was like at the other end of the island.

All I knew was that the rendezvous with Fidel Castro
had been fixed for midnight the next night in the Sierra
Maestra. I knew who Javier Pazos was, but aside from
that I did not ask, nor did I want to know, the names of
any of the Cubans who were risking their lives to take me
to Fidel It was not until after we started that I even
knew our destination and jumping-off point in Oriente
Province— Manzanillo.

Nancie wrote an account of the trip for The New Yorfc
Times house organ for March, 1957— Times Talk. This is
how it went from Havana to Manzanillo:

I should have remembered that most Cubans, however
gloriously brave, are consistently unpunctuaL It was almost
ten o'clock that bright moonlight night before we started. The
delay gave us our last chance for a pair of frozen daiquiries at
the Floridita and some delicious More crab, a combination to
stouten a timorous heart. My queasiness changed to excited
anticipation,

I will call our young companions Juan [Javier Pacos] and
Paco [Faustmo P6rez]. Paco had brought his wife, Marta
[Liliam Mesal, to do part of the driving, Marta and Juan sang
an international repertoire of songs.

Herbert had told me that the utmost discretion was neces*
sary, but in the sixteen hows our journey took we stopped so

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

many times for thirnblefuls of Cuban coffee that a long trail
of people had every chance to examine us in detail. By 5 A.M.
we were cold. I was hideously depressed.

As day broke we were well into Oriente Province and the
sugar country. We decided to breakfast in a large town
( Camaguey— there are about two million people in Oriente
Province), Marta, driving, had no sense of direction. She
circled the same handsome, pleasant policeman three times
to ask him the way to a good hotel. That charming girl, I
thought, is a dangerous wife for a revolutionary. Caf6 au lait,
fresh rolls and the warmth of the sun gave us all the lift we
needed as we approached the Sierras and the troop road blocks
we knew would come.

My heart missed a beat as a soldier stepped into the road
and signaled us to stop, but he merely peered at us in friendly
fashion. One look at the white chimney-pot hat put on to cover
the wreck of my hair and we were waved on. "The absolute
dope/' I exclaimed, feeling almost let down. Juan shrugged.
'Why should they care?"

We now ran parallel to the Sierra Maestra— a fine fertile
country. At the next road block, soldiers were searching a
car. Now, I thought, one examination of Herbert's passport
marked "Journalist" and we will at least be turned back. But
we were not stopped then or at any other patrol point. It was
after 2 P.M. February 16, when we got there [ManzanxUo].
For obvious reasons I cannot say where or what house, nor
could Pace for a while. We circled and circled. Paco seemed
to shrink into himself, speechless. He would point a finger in
some direction, now and again, to the bewildered Marta. No
one dared ask directions. I didn't know until later that Paco
was one of the eighty-one youths who had landed with Fidel
Castro in the yacht, Gramma, from Mexico on December 2.

I dare not give too many details, but after an agonizing hunt
we located the preliminary rendezvous. We found ourselves
surrounded by the kind of men and women you might meet

THE CUBAN STORY

at any Cuban tea party. Incongruously, someone asked me in
English if 1 wanted my dress pressed.

Our hosts in Manzanillo could not keep their names

secret from us since they were known to everyone in town.
They were Pedro and Ena Sauxnel, both teachers, and
both typical of the middle-class intellectuals who made
the Cuban Revolution as they have made all modem social
revolutions since France in 1789.

There was an irritating wait of some hours at the
Saumels* little house, where I was to leave Nancie over-
night. It gave me a chance to rest and, being fifty-seven
years old at the time and having been up all night in the
drive from Havana, a rest was useful. Others from the
26th of July Movement were gathering in ManzanUlo,
some from Santiago de Cuba. They were intent on their
own purposes and, in fact, most of them went off during
the afternoon to join Fidel? leaving me behind. Javier was
upset, fortunately for me. The young man who was to
drive us to the foot of die mountains in his jeep, a resident
of the neighborhood named Felipe Guerra Matos (Guer-
rita, he was called) was balky.

1 was very disturbed with the organization of the
whole thing in Manzanillo^ Javier wrote in his letter to
me, c<and being very conscious of the importance of your
seeing Fidel, thought the merry way in which everybody
else went in on the first trip leaving us in Manzanillo
quite irresponsible. Later when Guerrita arrived he called
me apart to tell me we had to wait till the next day be-
cause army patrols had been stationed in the road we had

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

to take. I had a discussion with him telling him that I
didn't care how we got there, but that I knew die only
excuse Fidel would accept for our not going on that day
was our getting killed trying. Finally, he unwillingly
agreed to take us. The other thing that had me upset, was
the presence of Ren6 Rodriguez and LiHam, with whom I
must agree I acted very harshly, stopping her from going.
I didn't want you to get the impression that it was a
country fair; as things go, next day she was right up there
with us/*

We got off at about seven o'clock in the evening of Feb-
ruary 16 and I was back at the Saumels* house about five
o'clock the next afternoon.

This is the story, complete and word for word, that I
wrote for The Times. It appeared on Sunday, February 24,
1957, as the first of three articles on the Cuban situation.

Fidel Castro, the rebel leader of Cuba's youth, is alive and
fighting hard and successfully in the rugged, almost im-
penetrable fastnesses of the Sierra Maestra, at the southern tip
of the island.

President Fulgencio Batista has the cream of his Army
around the area, but the Army men are fighting a thus-far
losing battle to destroy the most dangerous enemy General
Batista has yet faced in a long and adventurous career as a
Cuban leader and dictator.

This is the first sure news that Fidel Castro is still alive and
still in Cuba. No one connected with the outside world, let
alone with the press, has seen Senor Castro except this writer.
No one in Havana, not even at the United States Embassy
with all its resources for getting information, will know until
this report is published that Fidel Castro is really in the Sierra
Maestra.

THE CUBAN STORY

This account, among other things, will break the tightest
censorship in the history of the Cuban Republic. The Province
of Oriente, with its 2,000,000 inhabitants, its flourishing cities
such as Santiago, Holguin and Manzanillo, is shut off from
Havana as surely as if it were another country. Havana does
not and cannot know that thousands of men and women are
heart and soul with Fidel Castro and the new deal for which
they think lie stands. It does not know that hundreds of highly
respected citizens are helping Senor Castro, that bombs and
sabotage are constant (eighteen bombs were exploded in
Santiago on February 15), that a fierce Government counter-
terrorism has aroused the people even more against President
Batista.

Throughout Cuba a formidable movement of opposition to
General Batista has been developing. It has by no means
reached an explosive point. The rebels in the Sierra Maestra
cannot move out. The economic situation is good. President
Batista has the high officers of the Army and the police behind
him and he ought to be able to hang on for the nearly two
years of his present term that are still left.

However, there are bad spots in the economy, especially on
the fiscal side. Unemployment is heavy; corruption is rife, No
one can predict anything with safety except that Cuba seems
in for a very troubled period.

Fidel Castro and his 26th of July Movement are the flaming
symbol of the opposition to the regime. The organization,
which is apart from the university students* opposition, is
formed of youths of all kinds, It is a revolutionary movement
that calls itself socialistic. It is also nationalistic, which gen-
erally in Latin America means anti-Yankee.

The program is vague and couched in generalities, but it
amounts to a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and there-
fore anti-Communist The real core of its strength is that it is
fighting against the military dictatorship of President Batista.

To arrange for me to penetrate the Siexra Maestra and meet

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

Fidel Castro, dozens of men and women in Havana and Ori-
ente Province ran a truly terrible risk. They must, of course,
be protected with the utmost care in these articles for their
lives would be forfeit— after the customary torture— immedi-
ately if any could be traced. Consequently, no names are used
here, the places are disguised and many details of the elaborate
and dangerous trail in and out of the Sierra Maestra must be
omitted, *

From the looks of things, General Batista cannot possibly
hope to suppress the Castro revolt. His only hope is that an
Army column will come upon the young rebel leader and his
staff and wipe them out. This is hardly likely to happen, if at
all, before March 1, when the present suspension of constitu-
tional guarantees is supposed to end,

Fidel Castro is the son of a Spaniard from Galicia, a "Gal-
lego" like Generalissimo Francisco Franco. The father was a
pick-and-shovel laborer early in this century for the United
Fruit Company, whose sugar plantations are on the northern
shores of Oriente Province. A powerful build, a capacity for
hard work and a shrewd mind led the father up in the world
until he became a rich sugar planter himself. When he died
last year each of his children, including Fidel, inherited a
sizable fortune.

Someone who knew the family remembers Fidel as a child
of four or five years living a sturdy farm life. The father sent
him to school and to the University of Havana, where he
studied law and became one of the student opposition leaders
who rebelled against General Batista in 1952 because the
General had staged a garrison revolt and prevented the Presi-
dential elections of that year.

Fidel had to flee from Cuba in 1954 and he lived for a
while in New York and Miami. The year 1956, he announced,
was to be the "year of decision." Before the year ended, he
said, he would be "a hero or a martyr."

The Government knew that he had gone to Mexico and,

THE CUBAN STOBY

last summer, was training a body of youths who had left Cuba
to join Mm. As the end of the year approached the Cuban
Army was very much on the alert, knowing that something
would be tried and that Fidel Castxo was coming back. He
was already, in a measure, a hero of die Cuban- youth, for on
July 26, 1953, he had led a band of youths in a desperate
attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de 'Cuba.

In the fighting then about 100 students and soldiers were
killed., but the revolt failed. The Archbishop of Santiago,
Monsenor Enrique P&ez Serantes, intervened to minimize the
bloodshed and got Senor Castxo and others to surrender on
promises of a fair trial. Fidel Castro was sentenced to fifteen
years in prison but there was an amnesty _at the time of the
Presidential elections of November 1, 1954, and ho was let
out. It was then he crossed to the continent and began to
organize the 26th of July Movement It is under this banner
that the youth of Cuba are now fighting the Batista regime.

The blow, which at the time seemed an utter failure, was
struck on December 2? 1956, That day a 62-foot diesel-en-
gined yacht, the Gramma, landed eighty-two young men,
trained for two months on a ranch in Mexico, on the Oricnto
shore below Niquero at a spot called Haya Olorado. The Idea
had been to land at Niquero, recruit followers and lead an
open attack against the Government. However, the Gramma
had been spotted by a Cuban naval patrol boat. Planes flew
in to strafe and the men on the yacht decided to beach her.

Playa Olorado, unhappily for the invaders, was a treacher-
ous swamp. The men lost their food and most of their arms
and supplies and soon were being attacked by army units.
They scattered and took to the hills* Many were killed. Of
the eighty-two no more than fifteen or twenty were left after
a few days.

President Batista and his aides were remarkably successful
from then on in hiding what happened. The youths they cap-
tured were forced to sign statements saying tbat they had

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

been told Fidel Castro was on the Gramma with them but that
they had never seen him. Thus doubt was cast that lie had
ever come to Cuba.

Because of the complete censorship, Havana and the other
Cuban cities crackle with the most astonishing rumors; one
constantly encouraged by the Government has been that Fidel
Castro is dead. Only those fighting with him and those who
had faith and hope knew or thought he was alive—and those
who knew were very few and in the utmost peril of their lives
if their knowledge was traced.

This was the situation when the writer got to Havana on
February 9 to try to find out what was really happening. The
censorship has been applied to foreign correspondents as well
as Cuban. What everybody, even those who wanted to believe,
kept asking was: "If Fidel is aKve, why does he not do or say
something to show that he is?' Since December 2 he had kept
absolutely quiet— or he was dead.

As I learned later, Sefior Castro was waiting until he had
his forces reorganized and strengthened and had mastery of
the Sierra Maestra. This fortunately coincided with my arrival
and he had sent word out to a trusted source in Havana that
he wanted a foreign correspondent to come in. The contact
knew as soon as I arrived and got in touch with me. Because
of tihe state of siege, it had to be someone who would get the
story and go out of Cuba to write it

Then came a week of organization. A rendezvous point and
a time had to be fixed and arrangements made to get through
the Government lines into the Sierra Maestra.

After the first few weeks the Army had given out the re-
port that the remnants of Sefior Castro's forces were being
starved out in the Sierra. In reality the Army had ringed the
Sierra with fortified posts and columns of troops and had every
road under heavy guard. The reports reaching Havana that
frequent clashes were taking place and that the Government
troops were losing heavily proved true.

THE CUBAN STORY

The first problem was to get through the Government road
blocks and reach a nearby town that would be a jumping off
place. Late on the afternoon of Friday, February 15j» Senor
Castro's contact man got in touch with me in Havana with
the news that the meeting was set for the following night in
the Sierra and that Senor Castro and his staff would take the
chance of coming a little way toward the edge of the range
so that I would not have to do too much climbing. There are
no roads there, and where we were to meet, no horses could

g°<
To get from Havana to Oriente (more than 500 miles away)

on time meant driving all night and the next morning, so as
to be ready Saturday afternoon to start for the Sierra.

The plan worked out to get through the Army^s road blocks
in Oriente was as simple as it was effective. We took my wife
along in the car as "camouflage." Cuba is at the height of the
tourist season and nothing could have looked more innocent
than a middle-aged couple of American tourists driving down
to Cuba's most beautiful and fertile province with some young
friends. The guards would take one look at my wife, hesitate
a second, and wave us on with friendly smiles. If we were to
be questioned a story was prepared for them. If we were
searched the jig would be up*

In that way we reached the house of a sympathizer of
Senor Castro outside the Sierra, There my wife was to stay
amid warm hospitality, and no questions asked* I got into the
clothes I had purchased in Havana "for a fishing trip/' warm
for the cold night air of die mountains and dark for camou-
flage,

After nightfall I was taken to a certain house where three
youths who were going in with me had gathered. One of them
was "One of the Eighty-two," a proud phrase for the sur*
vivors of the original landing, I was to meet five or six of
them. A courier who owned an open Army-type jeep, joined us.

His news was bad. A Government patrol of four soldiers in

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

a jeep had placed itself on the very road we had to take to get
near the point where we were to meet the Castro scouts at
midnight. Moreover, there had been a heavy rain in the Sierra
in the afternoon and the road was a morass. The others im-
pressed on him that Fidel Castro wanted me in there at all
costs and somehow it had to be done.

The courier agreed reluctantly. All across the plain of Oriente
Province there are flat lands with sugar and rice plantations,
and such farms have innumerable dirt roads. The courier knew
every inch of the terrain and figured that by taking a very cir-
cuitous route he could bring us close enough.

We had to go through one Army road block and beyond that
would be the constant risk of Army patrols, so we had to have
a good story ready. I was to be an American sugar planter who
could not speak a word of Spanish and who was going out to
look over a plantation in a certain village. One of the youths,
who spoke English, was my "interpreter." The others made up
similar fictions.

Before leaving one of the men showed me a wad of bills
(the Cuban peso is exactly the same size and value as the
United States dollar) amounting, apparently, to 400 pesos,
which was being sent in to Senor Castro. With a "rich" Amer-
ican planter it would be natural for the group to have the
money if we were searched. It was interesting evidence that
Fidel Castro paid for everything he took from the guajiros, or
squatter farmers, of the Sierra.

Our story convinced the Army guard when he stopped us,
although he looked dubious for a little while. Then came hours
of driving, through sugar-cane and rice fields, across rivers
that only jeeps could manage. One stretch, the courier said,
was heavily patrolled by Government troops but we were
lucky and saw none. Finally, after slithering through miles of
mud we could go no farther.

It was then midnight, the time we were to meet Castro's
scouts; but we had to walk some first and it was hard going.

THE CUBAN STORY

At last we turned off the road and slid down a hillside to where
a stream, dark brown under the nearly full moon,, rushed its
muddy way. One of the boys slipped and fell full length into
the Icy cold water. I waded through with the water almost
to my knees and that was hard enough to do without falling.
Fifty yards up the other slope was the meeting point

The patrol was not there. Three of us waited while two
of the men went back to see if we had missed the scouts
somewhere, but in fifteen minutes they returned frustrated.
The courier suggested that we might move up a bit and he led
us ahead, but obviously did not know where to go. Senor
Castro's men have a characteristic signal that I was to hear
incessantly— two low, soft, toneless whistles. One of our men
kept trying it, but with no success.

After a while we gave up. We had kept under cover at all
times, for the moonlight was strong, and we knew there were
troops around us.

We stopped in a heavy clump of trees and bushes, dripping
from the rain, the ground underfoot heavily matted, muddy
and soaked* There we sat for a whispered confab. The courier,
and another youth who had fought previously with Castro,
said they would go up the mountainside and see if they could
find any of the rebel troops.

Three of us were to wait, a rather agonizing wait of more
than two hours, crouched in the mud, not daring to talk or
move, trying to snatch a little sleep with our heads on our
knees and annoyed maddeningly by the swarms of mos-
quitoes that were having the feast of their lives.

At last we heard a cautious, welcome double-whistle. One
of us replied in kind and this had to be kept up for a while,
like two groups meeting in a dense fog, until we got together.
One of our party had found an advance patrol and a scout
came with him to lead us to an outpost in the mountains.

The scout was a squatter from the hills, and he needed to
know every inch of the land to take us as he did, swiftly and

THE SIEKRA MAESTRA STORY

unerringly across fields, up steep hills, floundering in the mud.

The ground leveled out blessedly at last and then dipped
suddenly. The scout stopped and whistled cautiously. The
return whistle came. There was a short parley and we were
motioned on, sliding down into a heavy grove. The dripping
leaves and boughs, the dense vegetation, the mud underfoot,
the moonlight— all gave the impression of a tropical forest,
more like Brazil than Cuba.

Senor Castro was encamped some distance away and a
soldier went to announce our arrival and ask whether he would
join us or we should join him. Later he came back with the
grateful news that we were to wait and Fidel would come
along with the dawn. Someone gave me a few soda crackers,
which tasted good. Someone else stretched a blanket on the
ground and it seemed a great luxury. It was too dark in the
grove to see anything.

We spoke in the lowest possible whispers. One man told me
how he had seen his brother's store wrecked and burned by
Government troops and his brother dragged out and executed.
"Yd rather be here fighting for Fidel, than anywhere in the
world now/* he said

There were two hours before dawn, and the blanket made
it possible to sleep.

With the light I could see how young they aU were. Senor
Castro, according to his followers, is thirty, and that is old
for the 26th of July Movement It has a motley array of arms
and uniforms, and even a few civilian suits. The rifles and the
one machine gun I saw were all American—discarded models.

The captain of this troop was a stocky Negro with a black
beard and mustache, a ready brilliant smile and a willingness
for publicity. Of all I met, only he wanted his name men-
tioned—Juan Ameda [Almeida], **0ne of the Eighty-two."

Several of the youths had lived in the United States and
spoke English; others had learned it at school. One had been

THE CUBAN STORY

a professional baseball player in a minor league and his wife
is still in the United States.

The part of the Sierra we were in grows no food. "Sometimes
we eat; sometimes not/' one rebel said. On the whole they
obviously keep healthy. Supporters send in food; the farmers
help, trusted couriers go out and buy supplies, which the
storekeepers sell them at great risk and against Government
orders.

Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother, slight and pleasant,
came into the camp with others of the staff, and a few minutes
later Fidel himself strode in. Taking him, as one would at first,
by physique and personality, this was quite a man—a powerful
six-footer, olive-skinned, full-faced, witii a straggly beard. He
was dressed in an olive gray fatigue uniform and carried a
rifle with a telescopic sight, of which he was very proud. It
seems his men have something more than fifty of these and
he said the soldiers feared them.

*We can pick them off at a thousand yards with these
guns," he said.

After some general conversation we went to my blanket and
sat down. Someone brought tomato juice, ham sandwiches
made with crackers and tins of coffee. In honor of the occa-
sion, Senor Castro broke open a box of good Havana cigars
and for the next three hours we sat there while he talked*

No one could talk above a whisper at any time. There were
columns of Government troops all around us, Senor Castro said,
and their one hope was to catch him and his band.

The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to
see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught
the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island* Here
was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage
and of remarkable qualities of leadership*

As the story unfolded of how he had at first gathered the
few remnants of the Eighty-two around him; kept the Govern-
ment troops at bay while youths came in from other parts of

THE SIERKA MAESTRA STORY

Oriente as General Batista's counter-terrorism aroused them;
got arms and supplies and then began the series of raids and
counter-attacks of guerrilla warfare, one got a feeling that he is
now invincible. Perhaps he isn't, but that is the faith he in-
spires in his followers.

They have had many fights> and inflicted many losses, Senor
Castro said. Government planes came over and bombed every
day; in fact, at nine sharp a plane did fly over. The troops took
up positions; a man in a white shirt was hastily covered up.
But the plane went on to bomb higher in the mountains.

Castro is a great talker. His brown eyes flash; his intense
face is pushed close to the listener and the whispering voice,
as in a stage play, lends a vivid sense of drama.

"We have been fighting for seventy-nine days now and are
stronger than ever," Senor Castro said. "The soldiers are fight-
ing badly; their morale is low and ours could not be higher.
We are killing many, but when we take prisoners they are
never shot. We question them, talk kindly to them, take their
arms and equipment, and then set them free.

"I know that they are always arrested afterward and we
heard some were shot as examples to the others, but they don't
want to fight, and they don't know how to fight this kind of
mountain warfare, We do.

"The Cuban people hear on the radio all about Algeria, but
they never hear a word about us or read a word, thanks to the
censorship. You will be the first to tell them. I have followers
all over the island. All the best elements, especially all the
youth, are with us. The Cuban people will stand anything but
oppression."

I asked Mm about the report that he was going to declare a
revolutionary government in the Sierra.

"Not yet/' he replied. "The time is not ripe. I will make my-
self known at the opportune moment. It will have all the more
effect for the delay, for now everybody is talking about us*
We are sure of ourselves.

THE CTJBAN STOKY

"There is no hurry, Cuba is in a state of war 1but Batista is
hiding it A dictatorship must show that it is omnipotent or it
will fall; we are showing that it is impotent."

The Government, he said with some bitterness, is using arms
furnished by the United States, not only against him but
"against all the Cuban people."

"They have bazookas, mortars, machine guns, planes and
bombs," he said, "but we are safe in here in the Sierra; they
must come and get us and they cannot."

Senor Castro speaks some English, but he preferred to speak
in Spanish, which he did with extraordinary eloquence. His is
a political mind rather than a military one. He has strong ideas
of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the
Constitution, to hold elections. He has strong ideas on econ-
omy too, but an economist would consider them weak.

The 26th of July Movement talks of nationalism, anti-
colonialism, anti-imperialism. I asked Senor Castro about that.
He answered, "You can be sure we have no animosity toward
the United States and the American people/*

"Above all," he said, "we are fighting for a democratic Cuba
and an end to the dictatorship. We are not anti-military;
that is why we let the soldier prisoners go. There is no hatred
of the Army as such, for we know the men are good and so are
many of the officers*

"Batista has 3,000 men in the field against us. I will not tell
you how many we have, for obvious reasons. He works in
columns of 200; we in groups of ten to forty, and we are
winning. It is a battle against time and time is on our side,**

To show that he deals fairly with the guajiros he asked
someone to bring "the cash." A soldier brought a bundle
wrapped in dark brown cloth, which Sefior Castro unrolled.
There was a stack of peso bills at least a foot high— about
$4,000 he said, adding that he had all the money he needed
and could get more.

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

"Why should soldiers die for Batista for $72 a month?" he
asked. 'When we win we will give them $100 a month, and
they will serve a free, democratic Cuba.'*

"I am always in the front line," he said; and others con-
firmed this fact. Such being the case, the Army might yet get
him, but in present circumstances he seems almost invulnerable.

"They never know where we are," he said as the group arose
to say good-by, "but we always know where they are. You have
taken quite a risk in coming here, but we have the whole area
covered, and we will get you out safely."

They did. We ploughed our way back through the muddy
undergrowth in broad daylight, but always keeping under
cover. The scout went like a homing pigeon through woods
and across fields where there were no paths straight to a
farme/s house on the edge of the Sierra. There we hid in a
back room while someone borrowed a horse and went for the
jeep, which had been under cover all night.

There was one road block to get through with an Army
guard so suspicious our hearts sank, but he let us through.

After that, washed, shaved, and looking once more like an
American tourist, with my wife as "camouflage,'* we had no
trouble driving back through the road blocks to safety and
then on to Havana. So far as anyone knew, we had been away
fishing for the week-end, and no one bothered us as we took
the plane to New York.

In this interview were all the elements out of which
the insurrection grew to its ultimate triumph. So was the
true figure of Fidel Castro, before power taught him real-
ism and worked its intoxicating spiritual corruption, before
the ideals of democracy and freedom presented themselves
as impossibilities if he was to make a drastic social revolu-
tion. The essence of the social revolution was there on
February 17, 1957, in the words of a hunted youth in the

THE CUBAN STOEY

heart o£ the jungle fastnesses of Cuba's Sierra Maestra.

History was speaking, and it will be for history to say
whether, by and large, he betrayed the grandiose ideal
for which he was fighting.

The true idealism of the revolution was certainly there
on that day. It gave Fidel and his men faith. It won the
hearts and souls and the allegicince through torture and
death of uncounted thousands of Cuban men and women
throughout the island. Some of it— even much of it—re-
mains in this late summer of 1961 as the heart and the
appeal of the Cuban Revolution. But so much was lost!

I could not claim, myself, at the time to have had any
idea of the terrific impact my story was going to have, or
the chain reaction it was going to set up in the whole
Western Hemisphere. I knew I had a sensational scoop. I
exulted at the fact that at the age of fifty-seven I could
still show a younger generation of newspapermen how to
get a difficult and dangerous story, and how to write it.
And I was moved, deeply moved, by that young man.

Anyone who thinks that Fidel Castro did not passion-
ately believe every word he said to me would completely
fail to understand him. As I learned in the course of time,
one could say of Fidel what a contemporary said of Robes-
pierre: "That young man will go far; he believes every
word he says."

It was true that Fidel then had "strong ideas of liberty,
democracy and social justice, the need to restore the Con-
stitution [of 1940], to hold elections/" It was also true, as
I said, that he was leading "a revolutionary movement that
calls itself socialistic.* These were not necessarily incom-

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

patible, as the European Socialist movements have proved.

I had taken a minimum of notes in the Sierra— about sk
pages— which I still have. Among the phrases I did not
use textuaHy were these: "He inspires confidence ... a
born leader . , . an enormous faith and confidence.**

Fidel had said of the civic resistance: "Outside of the
Sierra we have a support in high social and business circles
that would be startling if the names could be given/' This
was true—and these are the men and women now in exile
in Miami or in the Cuban underground.

At one point I jotted down: "How young!" I little real-
ized the importance of that ejaculation.

For the historic record, a few minor errors in the Times
story should be noted. It was not true that the Archbishop
of Santiago de Cuba, Monsenor Enrique P6rez Serantes,
saved Fidel's life. This is a myth that still persists. Orders
had been given to kill Fidel on sight when captured after
the 26th of July attack. The man who caught him, Lieut.
Pedro Sama, disobeyed orders and brought Fidel in alive.

I overestimated the size of Fidel's forces in the Sierra
Maestra at the time. When asked, I said I had seen about
twenty-five rebels and knew there were others nearby—
perhaps forty in all. This was correct, but I was wrong to
think the group I saw was a part of a large force. As Fidel
revealed in a speech to the Overseas Press Club in New
York in April, 1959, he had only eighteen men tinder arms
at that time. The number I saw was swelled by those from
the 26th of July Movement who had come in with me.

My story, in fact, came at the ebb tide of the flood that
was to lead Fidel on to fortune.

THE CUBAN STORY

Fidel and his men had done more than come down "a
little way toward the edge of the range/' as I wrote. They
had come a long way—from Pico Ttirquino— and, as those
who went up later to see him discovered, it took about two
days of walking and climbing, not three hours, to reach
him.

He had, in fact, put himself well into the region con-
trolled by Batista's troops, taking a really great risk to
contact me. The whispering was not histrionics; it was
a necessity, Fidel told me years later in Havana that they
did not wait a minute after I left to dash back toward the
mountain tops and they heard they had narrowly escaped
an ambush.

My estimate that the rebels had "something more than"
fifty telescopic rifles was way off die mark. At all times
in the next two years the size of FideFs forces was greatly
exaggerated. He neither needed nor wanted large fighting
forces. The technique he used was explained so well after
the victory by Che Guevara in his La Guerra de Guer-
rillas (Guerrilla Warfare) that the book is now used as a
text by the United States Special Forces units.

Finally, I would never again call Raul Castro "pleasant/*

Having got the story, I had to get it out. Javier Pazos
went back with me to Manzanillo where the Saumels gave
me something to eat and Pedro drove us at top speed to
Santiago de Cuba. There was one scare when a soldier
stopped us and looked us over too suspiciously, but by
then we were in our guise of middle-aged American
tourists*

In Santiago, there was just time for a hasty snack at the

THE SIERRA MAESTRA STORY

home of a woman teacher, Senora Caridad P6rez Cisneros
—who was efficient, kind and brave. She had arranged for
three professors from the University of Oriente to join us.
I mention this because all were members of the 26th of
July Movement and one of die professors happened to be
Regino Boti, who has been and still is, Fidel's Minister of
National Economy. The civic resistance was impressive
as early as that, which helps to explain why I gave so much
importance to it in my account.

We took the direct flight that night to Havana, Javier
traveling with us as our son, "Albert," In Havana, Ruby
and Ted tried hard to get us to leave immediately, for we
were sitting on a keg of dynamite and if anyone had
talked, it would have gone hard with us.

However, I had some loose ends to tie together, especially
the secret rendezvous with leaders of the Student Univer-
sity Federation (FEU), whom I had promised to see.
That meeting also, in its way, proved historic because the
President of the FEU was none other than Jose Antonio
Echevarria who was to die gloriously in the brave and
almost successful March 13 attack on the Presidential
Palace in Havana. The students told me they had a plan
which would put a definitive end to the dictatorship.

I was taken to the rendezvous by Gonzalo de Varona.
The other three present were Victor Bravo, Jose Luis
G6mez Wanguemert and Faur<§ Chom6n. G6mez was also
killed in the March 13 attack on the Palace. Faur6 Chorn6n
(the original family name was Chaumont) became a
leader of the Directorio Revolucionario, which opened a
fighting front in the Sierra de Escambray, and he is now

THE CUBAN STORY

the Cuban Ambassador to Moscow. Faur6 was badly
wounded In the assault of March 13.

Jos6 Antonio was right when he said to me that day;
**Cuban students were never afraid to die."

That night we went out to visit the Hemingways at the
Finca Vigla in San Francisco de Paula,

We were to fly back to New York on Tuesday morning,
February 19. The customs inspection at the airport would
be our last hurdle, Papers were sometimes examined and
we could not know whether our secret had been kept.
The pages of notes from the Sierra Maestra and on the
meeting with the students were dangerously revealing,
especially as Fidel had signed and dated my notes,

**Let me carry them," Nancie said that morning. She
put them inside her girdle and, when we were weU out of
Havana, retired to the lavatory and extracted them.

I started working on the plane. The series was held up
until Sunday, February 24, in order to give the Promotion
Department time to advertise the articles and to give play
to the interview. Our Sunday circulation is twice that of
the daily.

In 1960, when the attacks on me reached a high pitch,
William Buckley's reactionary National flewew printed
a clever cartoon. It showed a happy-looking Fidel Castro,
sitting on a xnap of Cuba. Underneath was our famous
advertising slogan:

*I got my job through The New Jork Times™

CHAPTER TWO

The Insurrection

THERE is NO thrill in journalism like getting a scoop, and
this was the biggest scoop of our times. Professionally
speaking, no one can ever take that away from me. No
one could even try, because it was more than two months
before anyone else could get in to see Fidel Castro and
three months before the public had incontestable proof
that what I had written was true. This was when Robert
Taber and Wendell Hoffman of the Columbia Broadcast-
ing System televised a filmed interview with Fidel that
was presented on May 19, 1957.

The first reactions to my Interview were outraged
official denials in Havana. Unfortunately for Batista, he
had hired a former CBS executive, Edmund Chester, as
public relations counsel in 1953. Chester generally man-
aged to do Batista more harm than good, and this time
he surpassed himself. Like the others, he was convinced
that Fidel was dead. It followed that my interview was a

THE CUBAN STORY

fake. So Chester drew up a statement that was put out by
the Minister of National Defense, Santiago Verdeja, on
February 27, the day after my series of three articles was
completed.

We published the text of Santiago VerdejVs denial in
The Times on February 28, along with my reply and a
photograph of me and Fidel in the Sierra Maestra. Fidel
was lighting a cigar and I was making notes. The state-
ment read:

The Minister of National Defense, Santiago Verdeja Neyra,
replied to a cable sent by the New York Herald Tribune to the
Chief of State requesting some clarification upon the report
of Matthews in relation with a supposed interview with the
pro-Communist insurgent Fidel Castro.

The President has handed to this Ministry the cable for
reply and the Minister makes the following statement;

Before anything else, let me assure you that the opinion of
the Government, and I am sure, of the Cuban public also, is
that the interview and the adventures described by Corre-
spondent Matthews can be considered as a chapter in a fan-
tastic novel. Mr. Matthews has not interviewed the pro-Com-
munist insurgent, Fidel Castro, and the information came from
certain opposition sources.

It is noted that Matthews published a photograph saying
that it was of Castro* It seems strange that, having had an
opportunity to penetrate the mountains and having had such
an interview, Matthews did not have a photograph taken of
himself with the pro-Communist insurgent in order to provide
proof of what he wrote.

The Government does not know whether Fidel Castro is
alive or dead, but if he is alive, the Government takes the full
responsibility for stating that no such supporting forces as
Matthews describes actually exist and, with the same respon*

THE INSURRECTION

sibility, the Government reiterates that at no time did the
said correspondent have an interview with the individual to
whom he ascribes so much force and so many non-existent
followers.

Even the political opposition to the [Batista] regime, in
almost its entirety, repudiates the methods followed by the
pro-Communist Castro and at no time has he been able to
build a popular organization to win public support for his
unsuccessful terroristic attempts.

As to the poor economy to which the reporter refers, I
assure you that never in history has the nation's economy been
sounder or more efficiently administered. It was precisely for
the purpose of eliminating malfeasance and clearing up the
Administration, as well as reconstructing the economy of Cuba,
that the revolution of March 10, 1952, was carried out against
those who afterwards furnished money, arms and war mate-
rials, to be used against the nation and against the people of
Cuba.

The Times followed this with my reply:

The story about Fidel Castro surely speaks for itself. It is
hard to believe that anyone reading it can have any doubts.

So far as the photographs are concerned, there is one of
Fidel Castro and myself which was not dear enough for good
newspaper reproduction but which is very clear to the eye
on a glossy print.

[The picture ^hich showed me and Fidel Castro was repro-
duced on the same page of The Times.]

Knowing the doubts that would be cast on my story, I also
took the precaution to get Fidel Castro to sign his name on a
sheet of paper that I had, giving the place, "Sierra Maestra/'
and the date, February 17, This was reproduced in the final
editions of The New York Times on Sunday. This edition does
not go to Cuba, which gets an early airplane edition. Appar-

THE CUBAN STORY

ently the Minister of Defense did not see it and did not realize
the extent to which he had made himself incredible.
The truth will always out, censorship or no censorship,

The next day, General Martin Diaz Tamayo, military
commander o£ Oriente Province, whose troops were hunt-
ing for Fidel and his rebel group, also issued a statement
denying that the interview could possibly have taken
place:

Statements of that North American newspaperman are
totally untrue due to the physical impossibility of entering the
zone in which the imaginary interview took place. No one can
enter the 2one without being seen. In my opinion this gentle-
man was never even in Cuba, Someone furnished the imagi-
nary information and then his imagination did the rest. It is
totally impossible to cross the lines where there are troops
and it is foolishness to pretend that a sentry would let anyone
pass against the orders which he has received. This interview
is prefabricated with the purpose of aiding the psychological
war which is going on in the country. I do not know where
we wiU go if we listen to hofas (rumors) of this type which the
public have named **radio bombs/* With regard to Fidel
Castro, I must refer to what the President of the Republic said,
that is, he may or may not be here. Up to date., no one knows
for certain. If we have captured so many men, is it that Fidel
will be the last one?

Chester was confirmed in his disbelief by the fact that

President Batista himself did not believe my story. In
the memoirs the General wrote in exile, entitled Respue^ta
(Reply), published in Mexico in 1960, he had this para-
graph:

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In this atmosphere o£ doubt, the newspaperman Herbert
Mathews (sic), of The New York Times, published an inter-
view held with Fidel Castro and, to confirm it, inserted a
photograph which, because of the darkness caused by the
foliage, was not very clear. The military commanders of the
province affirmed with such emphasis to the High Command
that such an interview had not taken place, that the Minister
of Defense made a public statement denying the existence
of this event and I, myself, influenced by the statements of
the High Command, doubted its authenticity. The interview,
in effect, had taken place and its publication gave considerable
propaganda and support to the rebel group. Castro was to
begin to be a legendary personage and would end by being a
monster of terror.

"Ed Chester, of course, is fit to be tied/' Ted Scott of
the Havana Post wrote me. "He had told Ambassador
Gardner that Castro was killed and buried on December
9, which was a week after McCarthy's United Press des-
patch reporting Castro's death. . . . Yesterday I was told
that Ambassador Gardner is simply furious with you and
The Times and that he will get into the act today with
some kind of statement. He is being pressed by the
[Cuban] Government to make a statement and probably
will do so,*

Mr. Gardner, fortunately for him, did not issue any
statement, as it would have made him look as foolish as
the others. The Castro interview came as a complete sur-
prise to him and everyone else at the American Embassy.

It was therefore incredible and inexplicable to me that
long afterwards, on August 27, 1960, Arthur Gardner
should have testified under oath before the Senate In-

THE CUBAN STORY

teraal Security Subcommittee that I had gone to him in
advance and asked his help to get up to see Fidel He had
then, said Gardner, got General Batista to help arrange
the trip on a promise from me that on my return I would
report back to the Ambassador on what I had found*

For the historic record, and because my reputation for
never writing anything that is not true— or to the best of
my knowledge true—is sacred to me, I am recording here
in black and white that every word Arthur Gardner said
before the Subcommittee on this subject was false.

It is amusing and ironical to look back now on the
enthusiastic flood of praise and— on the Cuban side— joy
that was heaped upon me after my articles on Cuba ap-
peared. The tide of letters and telegrams that kept com-
ing in for months had no precedent in my career or in
anything I had heard. I would say the proportion of en-
thusiastic support to criticism was about fifty to one. Be-
cause the photograph of Fidel and me showed us both
smoking cigars I was inundated with enough Havana
cigars by grateful, and to me anonymous, Cubans to last
a year and a half.

Cubans and Americans wrote poems in my praise. The
Sevilla Biltmore Hotel in Havana, where we always
stayed, put a page advertisement in a magazine as late as
February, 1960, proudly announcing that: **JEn este Gmn
Hotel $e hospedo HERBERT MATTHEWS, el eminentisimo
Periodista Americano" (In this Grand Hotel, Herbert
Matthews, the eminent American journalist stayed-)

When I went back to Cuba for a visit in June., 1957, I
learned in Havana and Santiago de Cuba what it was like

5°

THE INSURRECTION

to be a famous Hollywood actor. It was excruciatingly
embarrassing, as a matter of fact.

History, like life, has its little ironies. The very Cubans
who were most grateful and enthusiastic— the middle-class
elements of the civic resistance—are now the most vio-
lent in their criticisms. The humble people who thanked
me then are still thankful.

The history of the revolution was shaping up in this
period of gestation. No one could know what form it
would take— no one, not Fidel Castro, not the civic re-
sistance and, of course, not Fulgencio Batista. So far as
the President was concerned, Fidel was "an agent of the
Soviet Union" and his followers were Communists.

The accusation was false, but it is another irony that
Batista now says: "I told you so/7 and many ill-informed
Americans will go on believing to their dying day it was
all a Communist plot.

Professor Juan Marinello, head of the Communist Par-
tido Sodalista Popular, wrote me a letter at this time
explaining the official party line. His letter was written
on March 17, 1957, four days after the students had made
their heroic and almost successful assault on the Presi-
dential Palace in Havana.

"In these days," wrote Marinello (in my translation),
"and with reference to the assaults on barracks and ex-
peditions from abroad—taking place without relying on
popular support— our position is very clear; we are against
these methods."

He went on to say that it was not necessary to make

THE CUBAN STORY

"a popular insurrection" and that what Cuba needed was
"democratic elections."

"Our posture with regard to the 26th of July Move-
ment/' he went on, "is based on these criteria. We think
that this Group has noble aims but that, in general, it is
following mistaken tactics. For that reason we do not
approve of its actions, but we call on all parties and popu-
lar sectors to defend it against the blows of tyranny, not
forgetting that the members of this Movement fight
against a Government hated by the entire people of
Cuba/'

What the Communists wanted, said Dr. Marinello, was
"a government of a Democratic Front of National Libera-
tion."

This was, and this remained, the party line until the
autumn of 1958, when the Cuban Reds saw that Fidel and
the 26th of July Movement were certain to win. They
then sent their shrewdest brain, Rafael Rodriguez, a
newspaperman, up to the Sierra Maestra to join the rebels.
They never helped Fidel. On the contrary, in the crucial
attempt at a general strike on April 9, 1958, they stood by
General Batista. At no time did they embarrass the
Batista regime, and in all the brutal counter-terrorism that
the Dictator carried out the Communists were spared.
Very few Reds were among the many thousands of politi-
cal prisoners in jail

General Batista was playing the same old game that all
dictators play so successfully with the United States. They
claim to be— and sometimes even are— anti-Communist,
and this will generally get them tolerance, if not support,

THE INSURRECTION

from American interests. In reality, dictators pave the way
for the Communists, and if Cuba has not taught the
United States that lesson we will never learn it. The only
sure protection against the Communists is democracy.

Batista had been sitting on a lid ever since he seized
power by his garrison revolt in 1952. It was easy for a
while, but by the time Fidel Castro made his apparently
disastrous landing at the end of 1956, a heavy ground
swell of discontent had built up. It was widespread, popu-
lar and bourgeois in content, as well as youthful and
revolutionary.

What it needed was a symbol of hope, a rallying point,
a leader. Fidel Castro provided all this. He had it in him.
Nothing could have stopped him at that time. He was
Cuba's man of destiny. All I did was recognize these facts.
By my interview I turned the spotlight on him. He has
held the center of the stage ever since, but that was where
he belonged. The Muse of History wrote that play, not I.

Batista, naturally, could not see this, nor could he see
how unpopular— in fact, how hated—he was. It is notori-
ous that a dictator who is settled in power and who has
surrounded himself with self-seekers and sycophants does
not know what is really happening in his own country.
Above all, he loses touch with the masses. No one dares
to tell him the truth. He is told what he wants to hear.
He deludes himself and is deluded by those around him.
Unpleasant truths are rejected as lies or the product of
ignorance. Opponents are criminals, Communists, paid
agents.

(This, alas, is what has happened to Fidel Castro, al-

THE CUBAN STORY

though his opponents are "counter-revolutionaries and
agents o£ Yankee imperialism/')

The Cuban Revolution came out of the past. On March
10, 1952, which was close to the fiftieth anniversary of the
formal birth of the Cuban Republic, Major General Ful-
gencio Batista turned the clock back with his garrison
revolt. Between 1902 and 1906 Cuba had her first Presi-
dent and her only honest one— Tom&s Estrada Palma. He
was driven out in the so-called "Revolution of August/'
1906, because a lot of politicians wanted to get jobs and,
above all, loot the treasury of the 20,000,000 pesos that
Estrada Palma's administration had saved. History went
on repeating itself in the next six decades.

The birth pains of the Cuban Republic had been ex-
ceptionally long and severe. Other Latin American col-
onies of Spain had won their independence generations
before. Cuba remained a colony so much longer partly
because the Spanish-Creole plantation owners were afraid
of the Negroes and mulattoes, and partly because it was
in the United States' interests that Cuba be in the weak
hands of Spain rather than a volcanic source of disorder
just off American shores. There had been sporadic move-
ments to annex the island, and it almost happened a few
times. To our eternal credit, we refrained from annexing
Cuba after the Spanish-American War, when we had our
best chance.

On the Cuban side the struggle for independence was
constant and often heroic. It was carried on by Cubans
who fought a desperate and bloody "Ten Years War" be-
tween 1868-78, which was lost through eventual exhaus-

THE INSURRECTION

tion. On balance, the United States helped Spain. In 1895
the Cubans rose again, led by their "Apostle/' Jose Marti.
Their version of the rebellion is that they were just about
to win when we moved in to "frustrate" their victory in
1898. In considering Cuban-United States relations this
must always be kept in mind. History is often what you
believe.

The idea that politics is a spoils system and that politi-
cal office is a means of enriching the individual rather than
of serving the public was one of the evil inheritances of
Spanish rule. It remained the prevailing attitude in Cuba,
despite many honorable exceptions. Padding of public
payrolls, bribing of legislators, graft in public expendi-
tures of all kinds ( Batista's regular cut on all public works
was 35 per cent), open raids on the national lottery funds
and cuts on illegal lotteries, outright theft of public funds
—these were the rule in Cuba for nearly six decades.

Both the government and the opposition were coalitions
of splinter parties. To be elected as a Representative to
the Government coalition (naturally the more lucrative) a
candidate would have to spend from $100,000 to $150,000.
His salary during his four-year term would be $48,000. A
Senate seat never cost less than $250,000; the salary for
the tenn would be $96,000.

The difference—and a lot more besides— had to come out
of graft. Since all congressmen had parliamentary im-
munity, they did not need to fear investigation. The suc-
cessive Presidents (Batista's predecessors, Ram6n Grau
San Martin and Carlos Prio Socarrds were among the
worst) and Cabinet Ministers got their spoils mainly

THE CUBAN STORY

through manipulation of the lotteries and padded costs
of public works. Most American companies moving into
Cuba to invest (this was especially true of public works)
had to pay large bribes to government officials and turn a
blind eye to subsequent graft.

Batista's regime differed from preceding administra-
tions only in die prevalence of high Army officers among
the grafters. The General had seized power with their
help or forbearance and he kept the officers happy by
cutting them in. Some made huge fortunes through smug-
gling and the proceeds of the wide-open, enormously
profitable gambling, with prostitution and narcotics on the
side. Some of our most notorious American gamblers had
a stake in Cuba. The great luxury hotels built in the 1950's
centered around the expected profits from their gambling
casinos.

A Times correspondent, Robert Alden, was taken at
Christmas time, 1957, "to a new gambling casino fre-
quented by many persons high in the Cuban Government
or Army. The automobiles that drove up to this place were
the longest and shiniest that money could buy. The women
wore chinchilla capes and sported diamonds as big as
robins' eggs. Thousands of dollars changed hands at each
throw of the dice.>?

The next day Alden was taken to La Llaguas, "a sec-
tion of Havana hard by a city dump where people lived
in almost unbelievable squalor in shacks made of palm
fronds."

At the end of the first twenty-five years of independence
Professor Charles E. Chapman of the University of Cali-

THE INSURRECTION

fornia wrote a "History of the Cuban Republic," in which
he said: "It is doubtful if the most notorious political
rings in the United States, whether national, state or
municipal affairs, have gone as far in bad practices as the
usual government in Cuba/*

Writing on the fiftieth anniversary, I could only say
that the record between 1927 and 1952 had continued as
bad or worse. In the succeeding seven years of the second
Batista dictatorship, it was still worse.

On March 10, 1952, the Cuban people were preparing
peacefully and— by relative standards— democratically for
a general election on June 1. They had had Presidential
elections in 1940, 1944 and 1948, and Congressional elec-
tions in between. To have passed another milestone in
1952 would have been a big achievement.

It was then that Batista struck. He had been the most
powerful figure in Cuban politics since he engineered the
"Sergeant's Revolt7" in 1933 after the brutal dictator,
Gerardo Machado, had peacefully departed. There had
been three Presidents between Estrada Palma and Ma-
chado (1924-33), one worse than the other. The pecula-
tions of Alfredo Zayas, Machado's predecessor, were as-
tounding.

Cuba was as ripe for a social revolution in 1933 as she
was in 1959, but the United States, which still had ulti-
mate control of Cuba's internal affairs through the Platt
Amendment to the Cuban constitution and through its
economic domination, worked successfully to forestall
a revolution. The result was another twenty-six years oJ
corruption, violence and inefficiency culminating in 2

THE CUBAN STORY

revolution far more drastic and dangerous than anything
that could have happened in 1933. For President Kennedy
to say in 1961 that the United States favored social re-
forms in Cuba was too late. We will be fortunate if we are
not too late in other countries of Latin America.

Fulgencio Batista was a candidate in the 1952 Presi-
dential elections. He knew he could not win by the polls,
so he took power by his garrison revolt. The Cubans have
always fought for their liberties— as they are now doing—
but in between convulsive upheavals there was always a
pall of defeatism and cynicism, the more or less patient
shrug of the shoulders, the acceptance of violence, graft
and mismanagement as if they were the normal order of
events. When the Batista coup came along too many
Cubans said: c<Well, what else could you expect? That's
the way things happen here."

One who did not say so was a young lawyer, Fidel
Castro.

Batista was a self-made man of great native capacities,
shrewdness, a tigerish courage and ferocity. He was a
beast of prey, as ruthless and as predatory as any dictator
in Latin American history. The fortune he amassed in his
career, and especially in his last period of dictatorship,
was estimated by Cubans in the hundreds of millions of
dollars. His cruelty was animal-like; it was not performed
out of sadism or viciousness— simply the law of the jungle.
It was perhaps not paradoxical that he could be, and often
was, charming. There was an attractiveness about him for
which there is an untranslatable Spanish word— simpatico,

He had what Cubans call "character." What he did not

THE INSURRECTION

have—and what Fidel had in overwhelming measure-
was charisma, that magnetic, mystical quality which wins
fanatical popular support. Batista, in fact, was only tol-
erated by Cubans when he was in favor. He was loved by
none, and those who hated him did so because of his
brutality and greed.

There was no respect in which he operated like Fidel
Castro, and it is ridiculous for Americans, State Depart-
ment officials included, to compare them. Batista was of
Spanish, Indian, Negro and Chinese blood. He was or-
phaned at thirteen and taken into a school operated by
American Quakers. Before he ended up as an enlisted
soldier, he had been a cane-field laborer, a grocery clerk
and a railroad fireman.

The key to fame and fortune in his case was stenog-
raphy, which he learned after his first enlistment. At the
time Machado was driven out in 1933, Batista was a
headquarters stenographer with the rank of sergeant.
Morality and patriotism never interested him; politics he
acquired. Batista had nothing to do with the fall of
Machado. He picked up the pieces afterwards when he
led the "Sergeant's Revolt" that made him master of Cuba
—a position he held, in and out of office, for twenty-five
years.

Fulgencio Batista could not know it, but his importance
in the history of the Western Hemisphere did not lie In
his shoddy, brutal, corrupt reign of a quarter of a century.
His unwitting role was to be the precursor of Fidel Castro.

It was infuriating to him that I and other American,
European and Cuban journalists were presenting Fidel

THE CUBAN STORY

Castro and the 26th of July Movement as a growing and
formidable, as well as heroic and patriotic, threat to his
power. There was Fidel, holed up in the Sierra Maestra
with a small group of poorly armed followers, and so far
as the civic resistance was concerned, how could they
overthrow a government backed by an army of 30,000
men, the police and a Military Intelligence Service ( SIM )
whose ruthless counter-terrorism could be—and was—
stepped up to fearsome proportions?

Logic was on the side of General Batista, the Cuban
ruling classes, U.S. Ambassador Gardner, the State De-
partment and the Pentagon. History, Fidel Castro and the
Cuban people were on the other side. What I saw first
and what others echoed with virtual unanimity, was that
the best elements of Cuban society and its entire youth
were at last getting together to create a new, decent,
democratic Cuba.

As it happens, the result in 1961 is as far from demo-
cratic as it can be. That is another story, which we will
come to later. In 1957-58, Fidel Castro's ideal was a free
and democratic Cuba. Neither he, nor any other Cuban,
would have fought with such passion and courage for
anything else.

The story of the insurrection belongs to another book
and to scholars who have access to the Cuban Govern-
ment archives and, above all, to the records kept by the
rebels in the Sierra Maestra. Celia Sdnchez, the appeal-
ing young daughter of a physician in Pil6n, Oriente
Province, who joined- Fidel in the mountains even before
I went up to see him, and who has remained by his side

THE INSURRECTION

ever since, has all the documentation— every order, every
letter, every broadcast, every message and proclamation.
For history's sake one must hope they survive the in-
evitable end of the revolution.

I was always in touch with the rebels in the Sierra
Maestra and with the civic resistance. No Cuban came to
New York without seeing me or trying to see me. They
never got advice or more than their journalistic due, but
at least The Times was kept informed, and no one could
say, when the rebellion triumphed, that readers of The
Times had been kept uninformed.

Cubans never could understand, and never would be-
lieve me, when I said that my trip to the Sierra Maestra
and everything else I wrote was professional journalism.
The facts and the truth were their best allies in those two
years of struggle.

Jaime Benitez, Chancellor of the University of Puerto
Rico, writing in May, 1961, made a distinction between
what he called "the two Castros, the two Cuban revolu-
tions, each appreciable on its own and yet simultaneous
and inter-acting.

The first we shall call the Cuban Revolution: it was made
by Castro with the support of the Cuban people, and be it
said in fairness, of The New York Times—whose stories and
editorials helped to make Castro and his movement acceptable
to as yet undecided Cubans— and of all the liberal press and
progressive opinion throughout the United States. It had in
back of it the best Cuban traditions of courage and idealism
and enjoyed the endorsement and best wishes of free men
throughout the world.

THE CUBAN STORY

Dr. Benitez called the second revolution "Fidelismo"
which, he said, "was also part of Cuba's background, tra-
ditions and infirmities. " As I said before, we will get to
this "revolution*' later. If its embryo lay in the womb of
Cuban history as early as 1957-58, it could not be seen.
It need not ever have been born.

Faustino Perez and Liliam Mesa, the young couple who
took us to Oriente Province with Javier Pazos, were ar-
rested by the SIM on March 19, 1957. I learned this in
a letter from someone named Dolores Montero, a friend
of theirs in the 26th of July Movement, who wrote me
from Havana. Incidentally, this was the first time we
learned their true names and that they were not husband
and wife. Dolores Montero said that they had been mal-
treated to get them to confess that they had taken us to
the Sierra Maestra but had refused to talk. Somebody had
talked, but it was not either of us. Cubans are as little
able to keep a secret as any people in the world. The
Central Intelligence Agency was to discover this when
it was preparing for the invasion of April, 1961.

Javier Pazos went underground at the time and later
joined Fidel in the Sierra Maestra. On January 12, 1958,
he, Armando Hart, a young lawyer, and Dr. Antonio
Buch, of a prominent Santiago de Cuba family— all im-
portant lieutenants of Fidel's— were captured. Havana
Army headquarters telephoned Santiago that they were
to be executed. The telephone operator handling the call
in Santiago listened in and passed the word to the 26th
of July leaders in the city. Through the Buch family they
got on to me in New York and to the State Department.

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Washington had inquiries made through the Embassy in
Havana and we made our inquiries through Ruby Phil-
lips, our Havana correspondent. The executions were
called off.

This was the way the rebellion had its links to the
United States. Our inquiry was legitimate journalism, but
it helped save the lives of three young Cubans, one of
whom became— and still is— Minister of Education.

( I had discovered during the Per6n dictatorship in Ar-
gentina that Latin American dictators fear The New York
Times more than they do the State Department, and that
publicity in The Times would get political victims out of
jail where recourse to the local courts was hopeless. In
1955, 1 penetrated the Villa de Voto jail in Buenos Aires,
under the guise of an Argentine relative, interviewed a
group of students who had been held without trial for
months, wrote a story about them for The Times and got
them released in a few days. )

In order to keep "law and order" Batista used some of
the toughest killers and sadists available in key Army and
police posts, where they could meet terrorism with coun-
ter-terrorism. It was what President Gerardo Machado
had done in 1928-33. The American press in general
(not The New York Times) has the shameful record that
it printed almost nothing of this slaughter of thousands by
Batista while it has chronicled in the most lurid way the
execution (without torture, incidentally) of hundreds by
Fidel Castro— nearly all "war criminals'* in the first weeks
of the revolution.

I had been getting authentic information of the bru-

THE CUBAN STORY

tality and the revolutionary ferment, so I went back to
Cuba in June, 1957. I started out with a long interview
that General Batista gave me and that we front-paged.
It was one of Batista's virtues that he never allowed his
personal feelings to interfere with the business of govern-
ment. I had done him more harm than all other journalists
in his career combined, and he was sharp in some of his
answers, but we sat and talked off the record in friendly
fashion for three-quarters of an hour. He would not, or
could not concede that his regime was unpopular, but he
wryly agreed with me that it is easier to seize power than
to give it up.

In Santiago de Cuba, the underground approached me,
although I was living in a goldfish bowl. Some of the most
respected citizens provided the cover and the contacts
that enabled me to have long talks with men and women
whose lives would have been forfeit if the SIM had been
as well organized as the 26th of July Movement. The
operation consisted in leaving the hotel with some promi-
nent and unsuspected person, driving around to be sure
we were not followed, then switching cars swiftly, some-
times twice. At the assignation point a youth would be
standing or walking as a lookout and would give the sig-
nal that all was clear and we had not been followed.

In this way I saw, among others, Frank Pais, Fidel's
second in command, Celia Sanchez, whom Time maga-
zine was later to call "Fidel's Girl Friday/7 Vilma Espin,
Raul Castro's girl friend and now his wife, and Manuel
Urrutia, the judge, who was to become the first, tragic
President of revolutionary Cuba. Dr. Urrutia had stood

THE INSURRECTION

out against the other judges of the Urgency Court of
Santiago de Cuba the month before in refusing to con-
demn a large group of young insurrectionists, among them
twenty-two who had been on the Granma with Fidel. He
argued that it was legitimate to fight against a govern-
ment that violates civic liberties. The Judge was promptly
relieved of his post, and when I saw him he was planning
to flee to the United States. The judgment he rendered
as a veto particular (a personal sentence) was to become
heresy in the Castro regime.

The next time Frank Pais came down from the Sierra
Maestra to Santiago -de Cuba the police caught up with
him and killed him. He was a great loss to Fidel and to
Cuba, as was later the tragic death of Camilo Cienfuegos.
These were two young, very able, moderate and anti-
Communist patriots whose death left the field clear for
the radical young Argentine doctor, Che Guevara and
Fidel's younger brother, Raul.

As a result of my talks in Santiago de Cuba and Havana
I was able to tell The Times in a despatch on June 8 that
Fidel Castro "is stronger than ever, his prestige has risen
throughout Cuba and he is today far and away the great-
est figure in the nation-wide opposition to President Fui-
gencio Batista."

The next day I sent an article from Santiago de Cuba
saying the city was "in open revolt'7 and the whole
Province of Oriente was up in arms against Batista. I told
of the reign of terror, of the risks people took to see me
and how "dozens of humble persons accosted me on the
streets and elsewhere to shake hands, partly to thank The

THE CUBAN STORY

New Yorfc Times for what it considered its effort to pre-
sent the truth about Cuba in its news and editorial col-
umns, and partly as a gesture of defiance against the
authorities."

"Everybody I saw was convinced that the police au-
thorities had orders from Havana to refrain from any act
of terrorism during the three days I was here/7 I wrote,
"For this reason, The Times gets credit for having given
Santiago de Cuba three days of peace, such as this tor-
mented city has not known for many months."

A week later I summed up my experiences in two des-
patches from Havana.

'In analyzing the elements of this situation/' I wrote,
"it seems evident that two men must be satisfied or one
or the other must withdraw or be killed before a solution
is possible. Both represent powerful forces in Cuban life
and they are deadly enemies.

"The first is General Batista, who holds the reins of
power primarily through his command of the army and
the police forces. Important business, banking and land-
owning elements, Cuban and American, desire peace and
continued prosperity, and they fear the consequences of
an overthrow of the regime. These elements also support
General Batista. Finally, the President has until now had
the open support and friendship of the United States, as
represented by the retiring Ambassador, Arthur Gardner,
who is leaving Havana.

"The other national figure is Fidel Castro, the rebel
who leads a fighting force in the Sierra Maestra at the
eastern end of the island. The Cuban army has thus far

THE INSURRECTION

been powerless to liquidate him and he has a widespread
following through his 26th of July Movement and sup-
porters of that Movement everywhere in Cuba."

I went on to describe these supporters, among the
youth, the middle class, the civic organizations and the
Roman Catholic Church.

"This combined force/* I said, 'Is fighting, literally or
metaphorically, to oust President Batista and all he stands
for. It proclaims ideals of democracy, freedom and hon-
esty in government/'

These despatches, and others I sent on subsequent
visits in the next year and a half, and the editorials I
wrote in New York, undoubtedly helped to malce Fidel
Castro and his Movement acceptable to Cubans and
liberals all over the world, as Chancellor Benitez was to
say. It so happens that every word I wrote was true.
These were the facts. This was, and is, and always will be
the history that no scholar with any judgment will be
able to ignore.

It was at this time that my connections with the two
United States Ambassadors who represented us during
the entire seven years of Batista's dictatorship came to
what might be called a climax. These relations were the
subject of a generally nonsensical pair of hearings by the
Eastland-Dodd Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, held on August 27 and 30, 1960.

In my despatches in February and June, 1957, I had
pointed out how excessively friendly Ambassador Gard-
ner was with General Batista and how bitterly Cubans
felt about him and Washington. On June 1(3, 1957, I

THE CUBAN STORY

wrote: "Ambassador Gardner left Cuba today with the
relations of the Cuban people toward the United States
gravely impaired."

Of this there could be no doubt. Gardner was possibly
right in blaming me for his removal from the Havana
post, although I would like to believe that the State De-
partment realized his shortcomings. I had seen Secretaiy
of State John Foster Dulles in Washington a month be-
fore, and he told me they had had the worst time trying
to force Gardner out. He wanted desperately to stay and
even went over Dulles' head to the President to try to
remain indefinitely. Gardner said Batista would be very
upset as he, Gardner, was so close to Batista and that
it would be a sign we were changing our policy toward
Cuba and acknowledging the Tightness of the criticism of
himself. Therefore, he could not be persuaded to offer a
genuine resignation. However, he had, like all ambassa-
dors, submitted a pro forma resignation when President
Eisenhower started his second term in January, 1957.
Dulles told me that he dug that resignation out of the files
and had the State Department get out a press statement
that Gardner had resigned and the resignation was being
accepted with regret. This, he said, explained why the
President felt it necessary to write Gardner a long letter
also expressing his regrets.

Dulles (and all the top State Department officials)
gave me the impression on that visit that the newly ap-
pointed Ambassador, Earl E. T. Smith, would get very
different instructions than Gardner had been getting.

Poor Cuba was getting still another businessman, a

THE INSURRECTION

complete novice to diplomacy and to Latin America,
whose only known qualification for the appointment was
that he was finance chairman of the Republican Party
State Committee in Florida in 1955 and had helped to
raise funds in the 1956 campaign. He was a wealthy
sportsman and broker.

Everyone at the State Department realized that if ever
a post required an experienced career officer, Havana in
1957 was the place. They had a candidate, and the White
House agreed, but alas for Cuba and for the United
States, Freeman (Doc) Matthews, then Ambassador to
Sweden, could not accept for personal reasons. It is on
such quirks of Fate that history turns.

The fact that I was supposed to have briefed Earl
Smith before he went to Cuba came up somewhat sen-
sationally in 1960, and especially in the Senate Subcom-
mittee hearing which I have already mentioned. Arthur
Gardner, who apparently did not approve of his successor,
first testified that <rhe [meaning me] briefed Earl Smith."

Smith, whose testimony was altogether more respon-
sible than Gardner's, was asked about this by J. G. Sour-
wine, the Subcommittee's counsel. Here are the passages
that concern this so-called briefing (Pages 682-3 of the
hearings put out by the Subcommittee ) :

MR. SOURWINE. Is it true, sir, that you were instructed to get a
briefing on your new job as Ambassador to
Cuba from Herbert Matthews of The New
Yorfc Times?

ME. SMITH. Yes, that is correct.

MR. SOURWINE. Who gave you these instructions?

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MR. SMITH. William Wieland, Director of the Caribbean
Division and Mexico.

MR. SOXJRWINE. Did you, sir, in fact see Matthews?

MR. SMTIH. Yes, I did.

MR. SOXJRWINE. And did he brief you on the Cuban situation?

MR. SMITH. Yes, he did.

MR. SOXJRWINE. Could you give us the highlights of what he
told you? . . .

MR. SMITH. We talked for £1/2 hours on the Cuban situa-
tion, a complete review of his feelings regard-
ing Cuba, Batista, Castro, the situation in Cuba,
and what he thought would happen.

MR. SOXJRWINE. What did he think would happen?

MR. SMrra. He did not believe that the Batista government
could last, and that the fall of the Batista gov-
ernment would come relatively soon.

MR. SOXJRWINE. Specifically what did he say about Castro?

MR. SMITH. In February, 1957, Herbert L. Matthews wrote
three articles on Fidel Castro, which appeared
on the front pages of The New York Times, in
which he eulogized Fidel Castro and portrayed
him as a political Robin Hood, and I would
say that he repeated these views to me in our
conversation. . . .

MR. SOXJRWINE. What did Mr. Matthews tell you about Batista?

MR. SMITH. Mr. Matthews had a very poor view of Batista,
considered him a rightist, ruthless dictator
whom he believed to be corrupt, Mr. Matthews
informed me that he had very knowledgeable
views of Cuba and Latin American nations,
and had seen the same things take place in
Spain. He believed that it would be in the best
interest of Cuba and the best interest of the
world in general when Batista was removed
from office.

THE INSUBRECTION

Allowing for a sour note or two, this was accurate testi-
mony. It was correct information and good advice that
I gave to Earl Smith, and it was a pity that neither he
nor the State Department based their policies on it. We
would not, in January, 1959, when the revolution tri-
umphed have had a hostile, suspicious group of revolu-
tionary leaders and an embittered Cuban nation against
us.

In one respect, which Smith did not mention, I thought
he was talcing my advice. I told him that Havana was not
Cuba and that the atmosphere in the rest of the country
was very different, and I suggested that he travel around
and see things for himself.

One of the first things the Ambassador did was to go
to Santiago de Cuba, the only city where we had a con-
sulate, and to our mining interests in Moa Bay as well as
Guantdnamo Naval Base. In Santiago, a large group of
middle-class women demonstrated against Batista and
were brutally treated in front of Smith by the Cuban
police. Smith was shocked and said publicly: "Any sort of
excessive police action is abhorrent to me." ,

President Batista and his associates were very angry
and protested to Washington. I had immediately moved
in with an editorial praising Smith highly for what he
had done and said. Secretary Dulles strongly defended
the Ambassador in a press conference, and we praised
Dulles for that. Later I got warm thanks from both
Smith and Dulles for my help.

This was the last gesture Smith made on behalf of the
Cuban people and against the Batista regime. On later

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trips I was to hear bitter criticism from Cubans of Earl
Smith for what was considered his support of Batista.

Smith's basic mistake— and there is none worse in diplo-
macy—was to keep on backing a losing horse, and even
in the homestretch, with the winning horse way out in
front, to try to nullify the victory. He had for months
been calling Fidel Castro a "ruffian" and a "bandit" and
this was known to all Cubans for whom Fidel, at that
time, was a great hero. There are no doubt millions of
Americans who would say today that Earl Smith was
right. This is a matter of opinion, but what is not merely
an opinion is that a United States Ambassador with any
sense of diplomacy does not insult the man and the move-
ment who are taking power in the country where the
envoy serves.

Thanks to Smith and, I would say, clumsy work at the
State Department, the United States started out in Janu-
ary, 1959, with an unnecessarily resentful and suspicious
Cuban Government in power.

It was, and is, a great injustice to two devoted and
competent United States officials to blame them, as Gard-
ner, Smith, Senators Eastland and Dodd, ex-Ambassador
Hill of Mexico, Ed Pawley, the tycoon, and many col-
umnists have done for the defeat of Batista and the tri-
umph of Castro. I refer to Assistant Secretary of State
Roy R. Rubottom and William Wieland, who is men-
tioned above.

In the first place, they could not have prevented this
outcome. In the second place, their policies in 1957 and
1958 favored Batista and hampered Castro. It is an as-

THE INSURRECTION

tonishing distortion of history to say the opposite. It is
equally a distortion of the facts to say that they were
getting or taking any advice from me about Cuba. In
fact, we argued frequently about the Department's poli-
cies.

There was no excuse for the charges made against
Rubottorn and Wieland, or for the way they have been
treated. This is typical of the McCarthyism that events
like this bring out in the United States.

The first time the American people were outraged
against Fidel Castro was when he and his troops kid-
naped forty-five Americans and three Canadians at the
end of June, 1958. It was a typically daring and provoca-
tive piece of work that showed a contempt for American
opinion and American power which was more prophetic
than anyone realized at the time. It was Fidel's way of
registering a protest against American favoritism for
General Batista and a demonstration that he controlled
the eastern end of the island.

The incident was also prophetic in showing that there
was nothing the United States could do about it. This is
a fact of the modern world, as Egypt and Africa generally
have been demonstrating. The Soviet Union could do
something about Hungary in 1956 and get away with it,
because this fitted the methods and aims of totalitarian
communism. For the United States to treat Cuba as
Russia treated Hungary would mean the end of our
democracy, our freedom, our civilization, our way of life.

The dilemma is a serious one, and there are always
those who want to resort to force. At the time of the kid-

THE CUBAN STORY

napings, some high officers at the Pentagon and some
Senators wanted to send American Marines in to rescue
the kidnaped men. Wiser counsels prevailed.

It was Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother, who en-
gineered and carried out the kidnapings. This twisted,
enigmatic character has played an important but always
subordinate role in the Revolution. He is four years
younger than Fidel and without any of his popular ap-
peal. Sharp of visage and of character, without warmth, a
disciplinarian, a good administrator, a hater of the United
States, an admirer of communism and the Sino-Soviet bloc
—Raul has long been seen as the evil genius of the Cuban
Revolution.

Because, in his student days, he went on one of those
junkets behind the Iron Curtain for a few months, Raul
was labeled a Communist almost from the beginning. He
has always denied this, and neither the CIA nor the
American Embassy ever found proof that he was a Com-
munist. No one could deny that for all practical purposes
he might just as well have been a Communist, and yet
there was a Cabinet meeting late in 1959 in which Raul,
furious with the Cuban Reds, shouted that if they got in
the way of the Revolution he would cut their throats.
Two of the Cabinet Ministers present told me that.

There was no excuse for the kidnapings, and for the
first time I found myself impelled to write sharply criti-
cal editorials about the Revolution. This caused some
heartburnings among my Cuban friends who neither
then, nor in the future, could find any attitude acceptable
that was not 100 per cent for what they believed.

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It was typical of the Cubans that they could not under-
stand the anger and resentment of the Americans over
the kidnapings. Fortunately, none of the captured Ameri-
cans or Canadians was harmed. On the contrary, some of
them found it a stimulating adventure which aroused
sympathy for the rebel cause.

This was typical of the romantic, youthful aura that
surrounded the rebels in those months of struggle. Com-
munism and the hard realities of making a social revolu-
tion in a hostile world were many months away.

The guerrillas spread out from the Sierra Maestra in the
summer of 1958. Raul Castro's "Second Front" was at that
time in the Sierra del Cristal on the northern side of
Oriente Province.

There was still another "Second Front" in the Sierra
de Escambray in the center of the island on the south
coast of Las Villas Province. This was where the Direc-
torio Revolucionario, organized by the university stu-
dents' Federation, had been operating since the previous
November. It was not linked to the 26th of July Move-
ment but had the same objectives. Although smaller than
the Sierra Maestra operation, and rent by quarrels, it was
of some nuisance value.

One thinks of it now because several of its leaders
made minor history. Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, the nearest
thing to their military commander, is now an exile in the
United States. Faure Chomon, whom I had interviewed
in Havana with the other students just after seeing Fidel,
is now Ambassador to Moscow.

The most interesting figure in the Sierra de Escambray

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was the tough, uneducated young American, William A.
Morgan, who could hardly speak Spanish when he arrived.
He wrote me several times, once to complain of other
groups in the Sierra, and once to grumble against Che
Guevara, who refused to see Morgan's command.

The interesting thing about Morgan, which entitled
him to a passing fame as a child of our times, was that he
had ideals. On February 24, 1958, he wrote and sent me a
"credo" headed "Why am I Here." Considering that
Morgan's American citizenship was taken away from him,
and considering also the contemptuous way the American
press treated him, one owes him the tribute of quoting
a few sentences:

"I cannot say I have always been a good citizen," he
wrote, <cbut being here I can appreciate the way of life
that is ours from birth. And here I can realize the dedica-
tion to justice and liberty it takes for men to live and
fight as these men do whose only possible pay or reward
is a free country. , . .

"Over the years we as Americans have found that dic-
tators and communist (sic) are bad people with whom to
do business yet here is a dictator who has been supported
by the communist and he would fall from power tomorrow
if it were not for the American aid. And I ask myself why
do we support those who would destroy in other lands
the ideals which we hold so dear?"

Morgan was consistent. He went on fighting for liberty
and against communism until he was stood against a
wall in the dry moat of La Cabana fortress on March 11,

THE INSURRECTION

1961, and shot. So far as I am concerned, William Morgan
was a good American.

Fidel Castro's insurrection was written off as lost by
virtually all American journalists when a general strike
was attempted on April 9, 1958, and failed miserably.
The entire Cuban trade-union leadership, in the pay of
Batista, refused to support it. So did the Communists. It
was badly organized and badly led. "The days of Fidel
Castro," said the first sentence of a despatch to The Times
from Havana on April 16, "are numbered, according to
informed sources/'

General Batista evidently thought so, and soon after-
wards mobilized his greatest— and what was to be his
last—offensive in Oriente Province to crush the rebels.
Here was the proof that the rebellion was won by Fidel
Castro and his guerrilla forces aided— and he needed it—
by the civic resistance. But for Fidel the insurrection
would have been crushed in the spring of 1958.

The general strike failed; the civic resistance in Havana
did not rise, but the guerrillas in Oriente Province went on
fighting. Their strength grew, although the combatant
elements were always very small. They fought off the
Government offensive of May-June, 1958.

At this point, everyone in close touch with Cuban devel-
opments could have known that Fidel Castro was going
to win and General Fulgencio Batista was going to lose.
•This is where the State Department, the Pentagon, the
CIA, and Ambassador Smith made their great mistakes.
There was no evidence that they realized the game was
up until October, a month after Fidel began his final

THE CUBAN STORY

offensive with three columns that fanned out from the
Sierra Maestra, led by Raul Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos
and Che Guevara. (Incidentally, October, 1958, was the
month the Cuban Communists jumped on the band-
wagon. )

From the beginning there had been a bewildering,
contradictory and amateurish array of future solutions,
programs and demands of and by Fidel to newsmen who
visited him in the Sierra Maestra. Each one got a different
version of the Cuban future depending, so far as I could
tell, on what would pop into Fidel's mind on the particu-
lar occasion, or what he had happened to read on the
previous day.

Meanwhile, his representatives and the Cuban exile
organizations in the United States, Costa Rica and Vene-
zuela were getting out an equally confusing collection of
programs.

The charge that Fidel "betrayed"' the Revolution is
based on the fact that he always, in those years, promised
democracy, elections, a free press and other civic rights
as well as his social revolution. Fidel never had any
original political ideas and he knew nothing about eco-
nomics, government or administration. This was always
obvious. He could not be pinned down in any given
month, let alone any year, to a consistent policy. Those
who think he is going to retain his present admiration
for the Communists may get a surprise in 1962 or 1963,
although that is unlikely now.

Yet a certain consistency does run like a pattern through
all Fidel's pronouncements and speeches, from his famous

THE INSURRECTION

self-defense after the 1953 Moncada Barracks attack—
"History Will Absolve Me"— to his latest speeches. The
Cuban social revolution is always there, and it was made.

In mid-February, 1957, when I went up to see Fidel,
the underground publication of the 26th of July Move-
ment, Revolution, published what I believe was the first
program.

"The Revolution," it wrote, "is the struggle of the
Cuban nation to achieve its historic aims and realize its
complete integration. This integration consists in the com-
plete unity of the following elements: political sov-
ereignty, economic independence and a particular or
differentiated culture.

"The Revolution is not exactly a war or an isolated
episode. It is a continuous historic process, which offers
distinct moments or stages. The conspiracies of the pre-
vious century, the War of "68, of '95, the uprising of the
1930's and, today, the struggle against the Batista terror,
are parts of the same and unique Revolution.

"The Revolution is struggling for a total transformation
of Cuban life, for profound modifications in the system
of property and for a change in institutions. . . .

"In accordance with its goals, and as a consequence of
the historic, geographic and sociological reality of Cuba,
the Revolution is democratic, nationalist and socialist/*

This, in every respect except one, is the Revolution that
Fidel Castro has made in the year 1961. The democracy
he spoke of then was liberal democracy; the democracy
he has now is totalitarian democracy.

Note the use of the word "socialist," which Fidel also

THE CUBAN STORY

employed in talking to me in the Sierra Maestra in 1957.
Yet a tremendous hullabaloo was made on May 1, 1961,
when Fidel, Che and others referred to the Cuban Revolu-
tion as "Socialist" It was agreed in the United States
that the Russian Communists call themselves Socialists;
the Cubans call themselves Socialists; therefore the Cubans
are now Communists. To be sure, this bit of logical non-
sense, put out by the State Department and the American
press, had a practical basis from the fact that the Cubans
were praising the Communist system to the skies, trying
to copy it in innumerable ways, and going in that direc-
tion.

I am simply arguing that Fidel Castro always called his
revolution Socialist, and he then meant Socialist— not
Communist.

The way things are going he will have a state indis-
tinguishable from communism, and then, perhaps, he will
call it Communist. He is not afraid to say what he thinks,
and Che Guevara even less so, Whatever else these young
revolutionaries may be, they are not hypocrites.

Writing to The New Jork Times from Havana on
March 22, 1958, during a trip, I said one of those things
which in 1960 and 1961 so infuriated Americans, who
have their own decided opinions about Fidel Castro.

"The key factor in this dramatic year [since my inter-
view] has proved to be the courage, dynamism and
leadership of Fidel Castro, the most remarkable and
romantic figure to arise in Cuban history since Jos6 Marti,
the hero of the wars of independence."

Exactly! If anyone had courage, dynamism and leader-

THE INSURRECTION

ship it was Fidel Castro. And those who doubt the roman-
tic appeal of Fidel to millions of Cubans and many, many
more millions all over Latin America, do not know what
is happening. To be accused, as I am now, of building up
Fidel Castro as a "Robin Hood" is sheer nonsense. To
think that The New York Times and not tiie Cuban people
were behind him is even more nonsensical.

It is often forgotten in these months when I have been
made an exclusive scapegoat, that a great many other
American journalists were writing the same things I wrote,
Andrew St. George, who became the outstanding news
photographer of the Cuban Revolution, wrote an article
for Coronet, published in February, 1958, which was
typical. St. George had spent weeks in the Sierra Maestra
with Fidel.

"The world has known few revolutionary leaders like
Fidel Castro," he said. "In Cuba, thousands of staid,
solid middle-class citizens work for him at the risk of their
lives. One newspaper recently estimated that 90 per cent
of the Cuban population supports Castro. The Govern-
ment of Cuba's dictator Fulgencio Batista has often
claimed that the revolutionists are crypto-Communists;
yet when newly appointed U.S. Ambassador Earl E.T.
Smith was asked, on the occasion of his first press con-
ference in Havana last summer, whether the U.S. State
Department had seen any proof of Castro's alleged Com-
munist connections, Ambassador Smith answered firmly
that the United States had no such evidence,"

(Incidentally, even in this late summer of 1961, the
United States has no such evidence.)

THE CUBAN STORY

Another unfair accusation against The Times was that
we wanted a revolution and not a peaceful solution of the
Cuban crisis. I challenge anyone to study the editorials we
printed in 1957 and 1958, which I would with few excep-
tions have written as I still do, and find substance for
such a charge. The contrary is true. We did call attention
to the arrests, tortures and killings of the Batista regime
(which very few other newspapers in the country did);
we pointed to the corruption, and we wrote of the folly
of the State Department and Ambassador Smith support-
ing so-called elections which were obviously farces that
would not be accepted by the Cuban people.

Add these up and one can argue that The Times cer-
tainly helped to overthrow General Batista. We also
helped, in a similar way, to overthrow General Juan Per6n
of Argentina, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of Colombia,
General Manuel Odria of Peru and General Marcos P6rez
Jimenez of Venezuela. Argentines, Colombians, Peru-
vians and Venezuelans were and still are very grateful
to me and to The New York Times for the role we played,
We are not criticized for it; we are praised.

So were we in the case of Cuba, deliriously, and by
Cubans who now bitterly attack us because neither Fidel
Castro nor the Revolution turned out the way they— or
anybody— expected.

Much was made of the fact in after months and years
that on March 14, 1958, the United States canceled an
arms shipment to Cuba and thus, in effect, instituted an
embargo against Batista. At first, the State Department
pointed to this as evidence that it was not favoring

THE INSURRECTION

Batista. Later, critics of the State Department indignantly
brought this up to argue that the United States sabotaged
Batista. Both points of view were greatly exaggerated.

Batista by that time did not need any more American
arms and from the viewpoint of military power he had
far more than he needed to crush the rebellion and repress
civic violence. It was not a lack of arms that weakened or
defeated him. In fact, the British sold him jet planes and
he bought other arms in Europe. On the other hand, it is
true that the American embargo was a moral and political
setback for him.

The embargo was an acknowledgment of the fact that
something like a civil war was occurring in Cuba. To
soften the blow, the United States encouraged a proposed
Presidential election in Cuba called for June 1, 1958,
which would have been an utter farce in behalf of Gen-
eral Batista. When the election was postponed until
November 1, we incredibly still encouraged it. The United
States has an absolute fetish about elections— anywhere,
everywhere, whatever the circumstances. A Batista who
holds a farcical election with chosen and bought candi-
dates deserves praise; a Castro who scoffs at the only sort
of elections Cuba has known, and dispenses with them,
is condemned for the wrong reasons. He is wrong to think
that mass demonstrations and his brand of totalitarian
democracy are a true substitute for genuine elections. He
is right to say that a great majority of the Cuban people
are utterly disillusioned with what they know of as elec-
tions and are not interested in them. Aside from that is

THE CUBAN STORY

the fact that Fidel could not have held elections without
putting a halt to his revolution.

This is getting a bit ahead of our story, but the purpose
is to contribute some understanding of why the Cubans
were so anti-American when the Revolution started. A
good witness to the way they felt in the spring of 1958 is
Jules Dubois, Latin American correspondent of the Chi-
cago Tribune, whose fierce opposition to Fidel Castro
starting a few months after the insurrection triumphed
absolves him from any calculated sympathy.

"Our Embassy and State Department are in the dog-
house with the Cuban people again/' Dubois wrote on
March 21, 1958.

"Cuban public opinion, although throttled by the most
severe censorship ever exercised by Batista, is outspoken
against the United States. The people, from the leaders
of the civic, religious, professional and social institutions
who demanded that Batista resign, to the students, accuse
the United States of pursuing a policy to support a dic-
tator and lose the friendship of a nation.

^[Ambassador Earl E. T.] Smith is being branded as
worse than his predecessor, Arthur Gardner. . . . Oppo-
nents of Batista insist that Smith has been captured by
Batista's friends and business associates just as Gardner
had been.

"They add that he has 'accepted the Batista propaganda
that Fidel Castro and his top rebel leaders are Com-
munists, Batista has been shouting this line to the world
ever since Castro landed here from Mexico in December,
1956."

THE INSURRECTION

Our high military officers sometimes show an admira-
tion for the worst type of foreign officials and a callous-
ness toward the political objectives of the United States
Government that are harmful, and Cuba was no excep-
tion. On September 5, 1957, there had been an uprising
which mainly affected the south-coast port of Cienfuegos.
The Cuban Air Force, using planes acquired from the
United States, bombed and strafed Cienfuegos with a
ferocity that resulted in the killing and wounding of many
innocent citizens, women and children included. The
Cuban officer who ordered the bombing was Colonel
(later General) Carlos Tabernilla Palmeros, In Novem-
ber, 1957, the United States Army gave Colonel Taber-
nilla the Legion of Merit at a banquet where he was
praised highly.

That same month General Lemuel C. Shepherd, Chair-
man of the Inter-American Defense Board, stopped in
Cuba on an official visit and in a ceremony at the Presi-
dential Palace responded to General Batista's toast as
follows:

"In my name and that of the IADB, I thank you for this
cordial welcome. We thank you especially for what you
have just said, since it comes not only from a great Presi-
dent but also from a great soldier."

These words were splashed by the Batista-subsidized
press (virtually all Cuban newspapers) in the largest type
and broadcast by all stations. At the same time, an im-
portant arms shipment for Batista was made from a New
Jersey port, but United States customs agents arrested
thirty-one Cubans at Piney Point in the Florida Keys as

THE CUBAN STORY

they were loading the yacht "Philomar III," with arms,
medical supplies and uniforms for Fidel Castro; and a
federal court ordered investigation into all activities of
Cuban exiles.

For some reason, a myth has grown up that the United
States Government winked and connived at the Castro
exiles' attempts to get arms, materials and money in the
United States to fight Batista during the insurrection. As
a matter of fact, a relatively small proportion of the arms
—perhaps 40 per cent— got through and of that amount
not a great deal reached Fidel in the Sierra Maestra. To
compare this with the massive CIA help for the Cuban
exiles in 1960-61 is ridiculous.

Three American military missions— Army, Navy and
Air Force— went on instructing Cubans in arts that the
Cubans used against their fellow Cubans. These Amer-
icans were still at it when the 26th of July Movement took
over Havana and Fidel sarcastically remarked that if they
could teach Batista's armed forces no better than they
had been able to, he would gladly do without them.

Americans should keep in mind when they contemplate
Latin American anti-Yankeeism, that tributes, honors and
decorations by the dozens have gone over the years to
Latin American dictators and their officers from high-
ranking officers of the United States Armed Forces and
from high officials. The most famous of all was Presi-
dent Eisenhower's decoration of Venezuela's brutal dic-
tator, General P&rez Jimenez with the Legion of Merit in
1954. There was also the unforgettable day in 1955 when
United States Secretary of the Navy, Charles S. Thomas,

THE INSURRECTION

in a ceremony in Buenos Aires publicly compared General
Peron to George Washington.

To give the State Department credit, there is almost
always moaning and groaning when these things happen,
particularly as they get blamed for American policy even
when reactionary, ignorant and simple-minded Senators
and military officers— or for that matter— the press, are to
blame.

The end of the Batista regime approached with the
United States in the doghouse and the American public
blissfully ignorant of that fact, or even of the fact that
Batista was doomed.

No one could know the exact day the break would come
since it was within General Batista's power to hang on
for some weeks longer.

I had a vacation coming to me and it was an obvious
hunch for my wife and me to go to Havana on December
27, 1958, to watch things happen. Not being superstitious,
I do not subscribe to the theory that newspapermen are
endowed at birth with a sixth sense, but it seemed to work
that way.

As a vacation, it ended on New Year's Eve. Ruby Hart
Phillips, our Havana correspondent, Ted Scott of the
Havana Post, my wife Nancie and I and some friends had
the traditional dinner— paper hats, horns, champagne and
what not— at the Havana Riviera Hotel The son of Jake
Arvey, the Chicago politician, was at our table with his
wife. Arvey casually remarked, as if it were hardly worth
saying, that earlier that evening, from the window of their
house overlooking Camp Columbia Airfield, he had seen

THE CUBAN STORY

a number of cars with women, children and luggage
streaming toward the airfield. We four— the newspaper
people— made hasty excuses. We knew what was about to
happen, although it took until 4 A.M. to confirm that
Batista had fled.

I could not repress a sense of personal triumph. In 1945,
ending a book I wrote called The Education of a Corre-
spondent, I said:

I have done my part at the wars in the past ten years, and
often I thought I would write Finis. But it is not for a man
to sign off. That seems a little like suicide. . . . A newspaper-
man is the soldier of fortune, the Ulysses of this [Tennyson's]
poem who yearns

... in desire

To follow knowledge, like a sinking star
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

. . . One always has that urge to learn more of the world
and of the virtues and vices of humanity. The way I feel now
I do not ever want to roam any more ... I have paid my price
to history, and it is for the younger men to- take up the
burden, while I sit back and say that we did things better in
my time, for "there were giants in those days/'

But if there is another war?

It had been fifteen years since I had heard what Ernest
Hemingway called "shots fired in anger/' but I heard
them those first few days in Havana before the 26th of
July boys could get in and restore order, and they were
like the sound of trumpets to an old war horse,

It had been my triumph, along with others. I will not
yield it to my critics or to history. But what had been
won? What had been lost?

CHAPTER THREE

The Revolution

IT WAS EXTRAORDINARILY difficult to convince the American
people that Cuba was having a revolution— a real revolu-
tion, not a changing of the guard, not a shuffling of
leaders, not just the outs getting in, but a social revolution
in the direct line of the French Revolution of 1789.

This was the first great failure of the American press,
radio and television in their coverage of the Cuban Revolu-
tion. I am not saying that anybody could have known
what kind of social revolution it was going to be or just
how it would turn out—not even Fidel Castro had any
idea of that.

What he knew, and what anyone in close touch with
him and his associates knew, was that the whole fabric of
Cuban society was going to be overturned.

"The unique factor about the events in Cuba," I wrote
on January 10, 1959, two days after the triumphant Fidel
Castro reached Havana, "is that there has been a real

THE CUBAN STORY

revolution. While dictators have been eliminated recently
in Nicaragua, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela,
in none of these countries have there been such profound
changes as those that promise to be seen in Cuba in com-
ing months."

I then went on to describe the sort of democratic social
revolution all of us— Cubans included— hoped for and
expected in those delirious days. I would include Fidel
Castro among those hopefuls, for he had not yet begun to
grapple with the task of making a social revolution.

On July 15, 1959, on my third visit of the year to Cuba,
I began a despatch from Havana with these words:

"Half a year after the revolt against the Batista regime,
Cuba is in the midst of the first great social revolution in
Latin America since the Mexican Revolution of 1910.'*

That this still needed to be said in July, 1959 and that
it was news to American readers shows how slow the
United States was to grasp the essence of what was hap-
pening. True, there had already been the charges that
Cuba was in the midst of a Communist revolution, but
this was not true and it merely distorted the picture.

The Cuban Revolution has had a profound effect in the
hemisphere because it was a Cuban and Latin American
phenomenon. The fact that it became communistic has
weakened its effectiveness, The revolution is not to be
explained away so easily.

It seems to me that I have spent a great deal of my time
in the last two and a half years describing what a com-
plicated phenomenon the Cuban Revolution is. The ones
who were sure they knew exactly what it was all about

THE REVOLUTION

and what was happening were at best naive and at worst
fools, simpletons or knaves. Those who harped on the
Communist line later said: "I told you so." Theyhelged
tp^ma^gjb^^ For a yearlincl a half—

certainly in 1959— nobody could know.

In March, 1961, 1 gave the annual Lectures in History
—three of them— for City College of New York on the
subject of Cuba and Latin America.

"These are lectures in history for your History Depart-
ment, so keep in mind some truisms," I said to begin with.
"History~in-the-making is even less of a science than the
academic history of the past. We are dealing with human
beings, not imaginary recreations of what we think hap-
pened; with complex and conflicting forces that have their
roots in other years and in different traditions, racial
characteristics, customs, religion, philosophy of life, eco-
nomic and political systems.

"No mind can grasp all the forces at play in a given
situation even if you can get hold of all the facts— which
you cannot. Clausewitz wrote of the fog of war; there is
also a fog of history through which we journalists grope
our way as best we can. At least we are in the midst of
what is happening.

"Despite the handicaps, I am going to try, in these
lectures, to look at the Cuban revolution and its con-
sequences in the hemisphere as history, with the detach-
ment that the historian needs. Cuba has been drowned
in emotions and ignorance in the United States during
the last few years. There has been a woeful lack of under-
standing."

THE CUBAN STORY

The fact that Cuba was ripe for revolution was recog-
nized in no less authoritative a document than the now
famous '"White Paper" on Cuba put out by the State
Department on April 3, 1961. It was supposed to have
been written by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., one of the pro-
jfessorial advisers at the White House.

"The character of the Batista regime in Cuba made a
violent popular reaction almost inevitable/' the document
s^ys. "The rapacity of the leadership, the corruption of
the Government, the brutality of the police, the regime's
indifference to the needs of the people for education,
medical care, housing, for social justice and economic
opportunity— all these, in Cuba as elsewhere, constituted
an open invitation to revolution."

Boiled down, what we were seeing in Cuba was a revolt
against a small, corrupt, wealthy ruling class whom the
United States had put in power and helped to keep in
power. I am not saying, of course, that we deliberately
chose or wanted venal politicians, corrupt businessmen
and an atmosphere darkened by gambling, narcotics and
prostitution. Nor was there any excuse for the Cubans
who were so dishonest and selfish. I do say, and history
will bear me out in this, that we accepted, condoned,
worked with and helped this ruling class to stay in power.

We did so for business reasons, for strategic reasons,
and in the name of stability. We built up the already
existing sugar economy to an overwhelming role, and for
most of this century dominated the industry. Even in
1958 we still controlled 35 to 40 per cent of the sugar

THE REVOLUTION

production and dictated Cuba's relative prosperity or the
JkJck of it through our sugar import quotas.

We live in a world where nationalism is the most im-
portant of all political emotions. It takes a destructive,
•xenophobic and often revolutionary form. Therefore, of
course, the Communists profit by nationalism and we
suffer. In Latin America, nationalism inevitably becomes
anti-Yankeeism.

In Cuba we had also given the Cubans many good rea-
sons to be our friends and to work with us, and it was and
always will be to their advantage to do so. But we also
gave them many reasons to resent us. A lot of chickens
came home to roost.

In the White Paper on Cuba, for the first time in more
than two years, Washington conceded that Americans
had to take some blame for what was happening in Cuba.
The self -righteousness of American officialdom, press and
business community with regard to Cuba played a great
role in creating the disastrous misunderstandings between
us and the Cubans in the crucial first years of 1959. This
does not excuse the stubborn, passionate self-righteous-
ness on the Cuban side, but two wrongs do not make a
right, and every element of the situation placed the bur-
den of understanding more heavily on our shoulders than
on those of a people exploding with long-pent-up emo-
tions. At any rate, we did say in the White Paper:

"The people of Cuba remain our brothers. We acknowl-
edge past omissions and errors in our relationship with
them."

A social revolution was narrowly averted in Cuba in

THE CUBAN STORY

1933, as stated before, when another brutal and predatory
dictator, Gerardo Machado, was gently eased out by our
diplomacy. The situation was ripe for revolution at that
time, too, and it was a time when we had the power,
through the Platt Amendment to the Cuban Constitution,
to influence the Cuban situation decisively.

As It happened, our influence was directed toward
holding together the existing fabric of Cuban govern-
ment, business and society. This, again, was to protect
our investments, to maintain stability and for the usual
strategic reasons. Then, as now, we used as an excuse
for undermining and overthrowing the chosen govern-
ment of President Ramon Grau San Martin the accusation
that he had "communistic tendencies/' Considering Grau's
later record, this was ludicrous, but it worked in 1933.

So Cuba had twenty-six more years of corruption, in-
efficiency and profitable business, this time, under the
domination of Fulgencio Batista. The General ended with
seven years of straightforward military dictatorship that
were in the worst Latin American tradition, during which
time he had the friendship or the benevolence of the
United States.

In 1959, nothing could or would prevent a social revolu-
tion because in addition to all the other factors that made
Cuba ripe for such an upheaval, a man of destiny had
come on the scene, one of those extraordinary creatures
who make history through some qualities that they pos-
sess. In a real sense, this was Fidel Castro's revolution.
It was he who gave expression and drive to all the social
and nationalistic pressures that had merely been threat-

THE REVOLUTION

ening revolutions in Cuba and in other Latin American
countries. Even though he had needed the island-wide
civic resistance to soften up and weaken General Batista,
it was Fidel Castro around whom the nation rallied for
those two bitter years of insurrectionary struggle, and it
was his small but effective guerrilla columns that deliv-
ered the decisive blows.

The defeat and dissolution of the Army meant that
Cuba, unlike Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela,
could have a revolution of a profound social, political and
economic type. This really was what Fidel Castro had
planned and what he and his followers fought for from
the beginning, although curiously enough it was not real-
ized by most Cubans, and still less so by Americans. I
am not talking here of the fact that the revolution turned
out to be different than anybody— Fidel Castro included—
expected at the time.

The point being made is that Fidel Castro was out to
make a radical, social revolution that was necessarily
Leftist, since it was directed against the former ruling
classes of big landowners, big businessmen and bankers,
high military officers and politicians, all of whom were
the beneficiaries of a corrupt oligarchical system. Fidel
was bound to come into conflict with the United States
because American property and businesses were going to
suffer, and because in any event his nationalistic revolu-
tion had as a major objective breaking United States domi-
nation of the Cuban economy.

Under the circumstances it was understandable for
Castro to accept help from the then small and unim-

THE CUBAN STORY

portant Cuban Communist movement, even though it
had done nothing to help him and had, in fact, supported
Batista. As the internal conflict and the conflict with the
United States intensified, the Communists were first toler-
ated, then used and then needed. The economic struggle
with the United States meant that Cuba would either
have to come to terms with the United States or would
have to turn to the Soviet Union for help.

I doubt that historians will ever be able to agree on
whether the Castro regime embraced communism will-
ingly or was forced into a shotgun wedding. My own
belief is that Fidel Castro did not originally want to
become tied up with the Communists and dependent on
them. I believe he was trapped in 1959-60 by his revolu-
tionary aims and the massive pressures against him from
the United States policies and the attitude of the Amer-
ican people. Then he persuaded himself that it was the
best thing that could happen, after all. I

After an event happens, it takes on an inevitability and
one feels that it had to happen. Historians— and journal-
ists—build a neat pattern to explain just how a course of
events progressed naturally and inescapably to its con-
clusion. Those who live close to the events, who are a
part of them, who know that the forces and pressures
involved at any given time in any particular circumstance
are enormously complex, that those who are making the
history are driven by emotions, consumed with doubts and
fears, unable to understand how their opponents feel,
unable to grasp all the complicated factors at work—those
who understand and see this know there is no inevitability.

THE REVOLUTION

There is a special reason why the Cuban Revolution, of
all contemporary events, was incalculable. This was, as I
said above, because it was given its original form and
direction and was dominated at all times— even within
possible limits today—by Fidel Castro. If ever there was
an incalculable creature on earth, it was Fidel.

He took over quicHy. Looking back, it would seem in-
credible that he ever expected to do anything else. Know-
ing him, I would say that every fiber in his body cried out
for leadership, but I would also say that he could have
fooled himself into believing that he did not have to take
command of the revolution. He came to Havana untrained
in the arts of politics, economics and administration. He
had no idea what it meant to carry out a social revolution
in actual fact and not in romantic, unsystematic theory.
There was no communism whatever in the revolution at
the time, and Fidel was, in those days, instinctively and
emotionally anti-Communist.

Latin American history has been dominated for the
past 150 years by a phenomenon known as "personalism."
The caudillo, the dictator, the strong president, the indi-
vidual—these have been the rulers. The instinct of the
Latin American, his loyalty and trust and obedience have
gone to men, more than to parties, more, even, than to
the nation.

In Cuba democracy had been growing until Batista
made his garrison revolt in March, 1952, but it was still a
feeble growth. Fidel Castro was a hero to 90 to 95 per
cent of the Cubans, and to an emotional, worshipful
degree that had to be seen to be realized. It was in vain

THE CUBAN STORY

that he set up the well-meaning but weak and little-known
lawyer, Jose Mir6 Cardona, as Premier. Everyone went
to Fidel with everything, however big or small. If ever a
man was drafted as leader, it was Fidel Castro. One
might add that, if ever a man was willing to be drafted, it
was also Fidel Castro.

Leadership satisfied his ambitions, but it also conformed
to the necessities of the moment and to the ideas that he
and his associates developed at the time. In fact, back
in December, 1957, Fidel had written to the Cuban exiles
in Miami that "anarchy is the worst enemy of a revolu-
tionary process."

Modern social revolutions, ever since the French
started them, in 1789, have followed certain roughly
similar patterns. The parallels between the French and
the Cuban Revolutions are, in fact, striking,

"When you undertake to run a revolution," Mirabeau
said early in the French Revolution, "the difficulty is not
to make it go; it is to hold it in check." And to quote
another Frenchman, it was Chateaubriand who pointed
out that "the patricians begin a revolution; the plebeians
finish it." As we would say today, "the middle-class intel-
lectuals begin social revolutions; the demagogues (of the
Left or the Right) finish them."

Those who had fought in or supported the civic re-
sistance against Batista in the cities were like the Girondms
of the French Revolution.

"The Girondins," wrote the English historian, H. A. L,
Fisher in A History of Europe, "were the last apostles of
the liberal idea. They believed in liberty, local and per-

THE REVOLUTION

sonal. They had a vision of France settling down to a
blameless and brilliant existence under a Republican
Constitution, the finest in the world/'

However, it was the fanatical, tyrannical, violent
Jacobins who got the upper hand, and when Robespierre
and the other Jacobin leaders were guillotined in their turn
in 1794, and the Girondins tried to make a comeback, not
they, but Napoleon Bonaparte came to power. The un-
happy lesson of all modern social revolutions is that the
moderate, the liberal, the democratic elements have to
wait until the revolution has spent its force.

"The clue to an understanding of revolutions," to cite
Fisher again, "is that they are worked by small fanatical
minorities." And as Albert Camus pointed out in The
Rebel: "All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforce-
ment of the State/*

The Castro revolution has conformed to type. In a hap-
hazard, opportunistic way, almost as if it were responding
to compulsive forces, it quickly built up a centralized
structure of which Fidel Castro became absolute master.

What Fidel, Che Guevara, Raul Castro and the others
did, was to use the technique first evolved in this century
by Lenin ( and later also used by the Fascists, the Nazis,
Franco in Spain, some Latin American caudillos). Power
is seized by a determined minority through control of the
army, police and means of communication. It is used to
make the revolution, not (or not at first) to create a power
elite or the super-mechanism of the party or state. That
comes later. Walt Whitman Rostow, incidentally, says
that "transitional societies" are peculiarly vulnerable to

THE CUBAN STORY

such a seizure of power— and Cuba in 1959 could be de-
scribed as a nation in wliicli the foundations of transition
toward a "take-off" had been laid.

In any event, modem social revolutions of the type
exemplified by the French Revolution all have totalitarian
characteristics while they are taking place. This is no
excuse for totalitarianism; it is a simple statement of fact.
There are other types of social revolutions— Uruguay and
Costa Rica are examples in Latin America— but such a
peaceful, essentially evolutionary method of change was
not possible in Cuba in 1959.

In the case of the Fascists and Communists, the total-
itarianism is doctrinal and it becomes relatively static, at
which time it ceases to be revolutionary. The Soviet Union
is not a revolutionary country today nor, for instance, was
Fascist Italy in the 1930?s. There is nothing static about
the Cuban Revolution, although it is on the way to becom-
ing a type of Communist regime.

I think in these days we can dismiss the Fascist revolu-
tions. There are fascistoid regimes, such as Spain's and
Portugal's, but with the defeat of the Axis in the Second
World War we put an end for the time being to the true
Fascist regimes and there is no evidence that doctrinal
fascism can make a comeback anywhere. Elements of
fascism are a permanent part of the contemporary world
and we even see them in the United States in the John
Birch Society and the types of peopk and organizations
which support the recrudescence of McCarthyisrn in all
its forms.

The post-war social revolutions are nationalistic and

100

THE REVOLUTION

Leftist, and at best, neutralist. None has been truly Com-
munist except China's and Yugoslavia's, plus those satel-
lites of the solid Soviet bloc forced into communism by
military pressures. Many of the new African nations and
Egypt, Iraq and Indonesia are examples of the national-
istic, neutralist type of revolution.

Leon Trotsky somewhere wrote of "the innate inability
of the Anglo-Saxon political genius to understand a revo-
lutionary situation." How true that was! Americans could
not even see the Cuban revolution for a long time, and
when they did they could not understand it. This was not
true of Latin Americans, nor even of Europeans. We
should not forget that even Thomas Jefferson disapproved
of the French Revolution. Andrew Jackson would prob-
ably have understood the Cuban phenomenon better. So
would Franklin D. Roosevelt. Certainly not Dwight D.
Eisenhower.

A social revolution destroys the existing political, eco-
nomic and social fabric of a nation and transfers power
and the control of the economy to a small group of men
who are necessarily extremists. They thereupon create a
new structure on the ruins of the old. If the work of
destruction is done thoroughly (and this is the case in
Cuba) it is never possible to turn the clock back, to re-
store the ancien regime.

In order to understand a social revolution, you must
put yourself in the place of those making the revolution
and recognize that revolutions have their own logic. You
must not— and this was a cardinal error in American
thinking— interpret what is happening by your own yard-

101

THE CUBAN STORY

sticks. In our case this meant trying to interpret what was
happening in Cuba in terms of our own stable, moderate,
efficient, orderly, mature, democratic way of life. These
had no relevance to Cuba. In any circumstances, it is not
possible to apply criteria of normalcy to a revolutionary
situation. Democracy, elections and free enterprise are
simply not possible while a revolution of this type is being
made, not because it is Communist but because a system
like ours requires peace, stability and slow evolution, not
sudden revolution. Criticize the Cubans, if you will, for
having a revolution, or for making their revolution the
way they are doing. Ask them to have democratic elec-
tions, but don't ask unless you realize you are asking them
to~give up their revolution.

It should not be necessary to say (although apparently
it is) that to explain and describe a social revolution like
Cuba's is not to praise or excuse it. I do not believe in
quarreling with history. The failure to understand what
happened in Cuba in 1959 was, to me, the inexcusable
thing. No one can say how much difference this may have
made, but a failure to understand would, in any circum-
stances, have been fatal.

Social revolutions of the Cuban type inevitably have a
class character. The "revolt" is against the existing ruling
class already described and which in Cuba, as elsewhere
in Latin America, was a small group of landowners, busi-
nessmen, bankers, high military officers and the politicians
who came from these elements. These are middle- and
upper-class groups. Those whom the revolution aims to
favor are the masses— in Latin America mainly the peas-

102

THE EEVOLUTION

ants, but also the urban proletariat of the mushrooming
slums.

To make such a revolution, you need new men whose
first qualification must be loyalty to the revolution and
its leader. There was astonishment and ridicule when
Premier Fidel Castro appointed Che Guevara as President
of the National Bank of Cuba in November, 1959, to suc-
ceed one of the most competent and internationally re-
spected economists in Cuba, Felipe Pazos. Yet, it was a
logical move at that stage. Che knew nothing about bank-
ing, but Fidel needed a revolutionary, and there are no
revolutionary bankers.

The old ruling class, as I said, was displaced and dis-
possessed. Anyway, it was thoroughly discredited, for it
had permitted and profited by all the abuses and failings
that made Cuba ripe for revolution. The replacements
were naturally, for the most part, young men. This meant
they had no experience in business, public administration
or the professions. There were no millionaires, no gen-
erals, no politicians and few technicians.

Obviously, one was not to expect efficiency or organiza-
tion. The disorganization in Cuba was, in fact, appalling.

Yet, a revolution sets great forces in motion. It is like a
cataclysm of nature. A nation is alive; it is the composite
of the men and women who live in it— and few nations
are as vividly alive as Cuba. The country had been
geared to a certain pace, a certain way of life, a whole
complex machinery of economy, government and social
relations.

The revolution upset all this. It gathered momentum

103

THE CUBAN STORY

fast, A revolution is a process, not an event. The dynam-
ism was such, that those who lost touch with Cuba for
even a few months did not really know what was hap-
pening. Yet the momentum of civic life does not stop.
Everything keeps going but unevenly, clumsily, uncon-
trollably. Everybody tries to carry on as before, to do his
work, hold his job, his property or his business. The com-
plicated bureaucracy of government has to continue as
best it can.

All the time, the powerful forces unleashed by the
revolution are beating on this structure with the fury of a
tropical storm— and it crumbles. The new leaders are not
only inexperienced and unrealistic; they are concerned
far more with social and political objectives than with the
economy. They have to be tough, hard, contemptuous of
the sufferings of the few, intolerant— one is tempted to say,
fanatical. Your dedicated idealist in the revolutionary
field is like that. Revolutions are not made by weak or
timid men. The new leaders play to win and in the process
break many hearts, commit many injustices to individuals
or groups.

s A Revolutionary leader has to be an extraordinary char-
acter with extraordinary qualities of courage, leadership,
ability, intelligence, popular appeal. In Latin America,
\pth its invariable, inescapable feature of "personalism,"
the revolution will be made by one man, in the past a gen-
eral, in Cuba a charismatic leader.

What makes the phenomenon a revolution in the true
sense of the word is bringing about a complete change-
social, economic and political. What makes It a Leftist

104

THE REVOLUTION

revolution in modem terms can be expressed in very old
words from the "Magnificat" o£ Luke: "He hath put down
the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low
degree/'

Within this general framework, revolutions take their
particular, national form. This was— and still is— a Cuban
revolution. Even granting that it has become more and
more communistic; even supposing it goes on to become
a Communist revolution, it would still be a Cuban revolu-
tion; it would have to be interpreted in Cuban and Latin
American terms. At the very most, it would be a bastard
child of Moscow and Peiping, and a very unruly one— in
fact, a juvenile delinquent from their point of view.

Chancellor Jaime Benitez of the University of Puerto
Rico tries to explain the dichotomy by making a distinc-
tion between "the two Castros, the two revolutions," "the
one reaching for social reforms through liberalism and
freedom," the other "a haphazard, totalitarian, propa-
ganda operation, run in mobocratic fashion; complete with
government by marathon television spectaculars, by
artificial crises, organized hysteria, calculated bloodletting
and deliberate vulgarization. It is a corruption of the
Cuban Revolution that has not yet destroyed it."

For Dr. Benitez, the revolution is not based on Marxist
principles— "really it is much less scientific and profound."
This was the opinion that Ambassador Adlai Stevenson
found prevalent in South America during his trip in June,
1961. He said Latin America made a distinction between
the Cuban Revolution and communism, a distinction that

105

THE CUBAN STORY

the United States Government (quite wrongly, in my
opinion) stopped making in March, 1960.

On our part, we were failing to understand, over-
simplifying, not grasping the fact that the Cuban Revolu-
tion, for all its startling newness, had profound roots in
Cuban and Latin American history. It came out of the
past, not out of Moscow.

Latin America has been notorious— even a little ridicu-
lous—for its political instability, its innumerable so-called
revolutions. Yet there has, on the whole, been social stabil-
ity—almost immobility— for 450 years. The same ruling
classes are still in control— those I have mentioned before.
They were, at first, the aristocratic, hereditary landowners
and the military officers and caudillos who came out of
that element, and then, also, the business and banking
interests when they developed. The political leaders came
out of these same groups. Taken together, they make a
small privileged, often corrupt, relatively (sometimes
fantastically) wealthy, exclusive ruling class. Through
the military establishments, whose generals and colonels
belong to this class, they hold the decisive power in nearly

all the Latin American countries.

As a general rule, the masses (at first rural workers and
then also the urban proletariat) have lived in real or at
best, relative, poverty, ignorance and disease. We all
know, surely, in the year 1961, that this state of affairs is
no longer acceptable. Those masses now know that their
misery is not the will of God or Allah or destiny, but is
due to the selfishness, inefficiency and corruption of their

106

THE REVOLUTION

rulers. This is not a Latin American phenomenon; it is
world-wide.

The revolutionary pressures one sees and hears about in
Latin America are essentially a demand for social justice
—a higher standard of living, a better distribution of
wealth, what President Kennedy in an address at the
White House in March, 1961, gave as "homes, work and
land, health and schools." This idea is also at the basis of
Pope John XXHTs Encyclical of July 21, 1961.

Who is going to satisfy these demands, or, to be more
realistic, give the promise of satisfying them? This is
where the cold war comes into the Western Hemisphere,
and it was brought in by the Cuban revolution. Until
that upheaval we had an ideological monopoly in the
Western Hemisphere. The Latin American nations had
only one road to take— the long, slow, uphill but sure way
to our capitalistic, free-enterprise, democratic system.
We said, in effect: ''First you have your economic devel-
opment; then you can make your social changes. Evolu-
tion, not revolution."

But this post-war world is revolutionary. Not our part
of it, to be sure, not our affluent society with its fan-
tastically high standard of living, its peaceful, stable,
mature, democratic way of life. The rest of the world—
what sociologists are calling the southern half of the
world— underdeveloped, backward, inexperienced, un-
committed, clutching wildly for the better things of life—
this world is now hearing another siren's song.

There were two streams of political thought that came
out of the eighteenth century. We, the British, the North-

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ern Europeans, the Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth nations
and a few others, are products of a liberal democratic
stream. The Communists, the Fascists, the authoritarians
of different varieties, are products of another stream, the
one J. L. Talmon calls "totalitarian democracy/' It has
been flowing in eastern Europe and Asia, and seeping into
Latin America. It says, in effect: "First you make your
social change (in other words, first have your revolution)
and then have economic development."

This is what Russia did and what China Is doing. It is
what Cuba is trying to do. It is the revolutionary road-
radical, Leftist, socialistic, communistic.

It may be that a third road is beginning to open up (in
Africa and Asia, as well as in the Western Hemisphere).
In Latin America it might be hewed by the Brazil of
President Janio Quadros— not a free-enterprise, capital-
istic system like ours, nor the totalitarian-socialistic type
of the Soviet bloc, which Cuba is embracing. It would be
socialistic in the sense of a very high degree of govern-
ment planning and control, but it would be capitalistic in
the considerable field left to private enterprise and the
orthodox methods of banking, credit and financial opera-
tions generally.

Most important of all, it would be politically neutral
and independent— in the case of Brazil, essentially demo-
cratic. It would not try to copy the United States or the
Soviet Union. It would not be dependent on either. Inso-
far as it resembles any contemporary form, it would be a
social democratic (hence socialistic) welfare state with an

108

THE REVOLUTION

exceptionally strong executive. It would be intensely
nationalistic, and hence would be no country's satellite.

The evolution of such a type of government is possible
in Brazil, and perhaps in a few other rich and developed
Latin American nations like Mexico, Argentina and Chile.
Whether there is time, opportunity, leadership and United
States, as well as local, wisdom are the great questions.
In this year 1961, as in 1959 and 1960, we have been see-
ing a polarization of thoughts and aims in Latin America,
brought about by the Cuban Revolution. There was only
one way before 1959 because of our overwhelming power,
wealth and influence. It was our way.

Fidel Castro and his associates were the first in the
history of Latin America to come along and say: "There
must be another way. The old way brought us social im-
balance, corruption, political inefficiency and subservience
to a foreign power—the Yankees. Let us break with the
past and find new ground." If the Cuban Revolution fails
it will be because they do not find "new** ground; because
they do not make a Cuban Revolution. They will have
moved into the different, but neither original nor espe-
cially Latin American, ground of totalitarian communism
a la Moscow,

I am saying: "if." I am not saying they have yet failed
to make a Cuban Revolution. It is too soon to say; the
Revolution is too dynamic, too dominated by Individuals
who are under no orders and no discipline, and, above all,
it is under the supreme direction of one of the most orig-
inal and incalculable characters of the twentieth century
-Fidel Castro.

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In its idealism— and there has been and still is genuine
idealism behind it— the Cuban Revolution is an expression
of the aspirations and the needs of the masses of the peo-
ple in Latin America. It is a result of the forces that have
been at work in Cuba and in Latin America— not for years,
but for generations. The causes of the Cuban Revolution
and of the revolutionary pressures in the hemisphere go
back centuries before Marx and Lenin or the birth of
Fidel Castro. This means that if we succeed in destroying,
or helping to destroy, the Castro regime, we and Cuba
would be facing the same pressures, the same ideals and
aspirations and demands for social justice.

What we would also be facing in Cuba (and this is
something that Americans do not seem to want to recog-
nize) is a revolution that has triumphed, a revolution that
has been made. Not all the Cuban exiles, even if they had
succeeded in their invasion of April, 1961, not the Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency, not even the American Marines
if we were so mad as to use them, could put this Cuban
Humpty-Dunipty, whom we once nursed so carefully,
together again.

A detailed attempt to analyze what has and what has
not been done in Cuba by the Castro regime would b§
out of place in this book, aside from the fact that the
dynamism of the Revolution is such that events quickly
overpass the descriptions of a given period. The Cuban
Revolution is a process, as I remarked before, not a set
piece that one can photograph. It must be felt, under-
stood, watched for its trends and calculated on the basis
of the complicated Cuban and international forces at

THE REVOLUTION

work, as well as the individual factors, with special atten-
tion paid to the overwhelming personality of the revolu-
tionary leader, Fidel Castro.

However, certain broad features of the process need
underlining if only because American press, radio and
television coverage, official propaganda and the wishful
thinking of Cuban exiles have tended to give a mistaken
impression. The Cuban economy is not going to collapse.
There was a possibility of this in 1959 and especially in
1960 after we cut off the sugar quota imports, but so long
as the Communist bloc continues to help, the Castro
regime can carry on and, in fact, the general trend this
year is, if anything, slightly upward.

American press coverage has generally concentrated on
the bad or weak features of the Revolution, of which there
have been many. As a result, the fact that the regime was
making good progress in some directions and doing some
very good things was overlooked. Jose M. Bosch, Cuba's
leading businessman, told me in 1960 that before the
Revolution Cuba was going downhill fast economically
and would have been ruined in five or six years. To be
sure, Senor Bosch and other Cuban industrialists are con-
vinced that the country is now going downhill even faster.

This depends on what one means by downhill and who
is going down. It must never be forgotten that economics
is a secondary factor in a social revolution. Most foreign
observers have agreed that the Cuban agrarian reform is
working fairly well, but even if it were not, the important
thing is that there is an agrarian reform. This is what made

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THE CUBAN STORY

such a great impact around Latin America where the
need for land reforms is basic.

Anyway, the Cuban peasants— say 40 per cent of the
population—and many city dwellers, were living at not
much better than a subsistence level before the Revolu-
tion. Whatever the Revolution did, it could not take them
lower. In truth, it has bettered their lot. Even if the
agrarian reform creates a Communist-type State system
the peasant did not have freedom and democracy before,
does not know what they mean and cannot be expected
to care.

He does know that for the first time in Cuban history
a government cares for him, wants to help him and is
helping him. He is now part of a cooperative or state-run
farm; he is getting new and decent homes, schools for his
children, hospitals, roads. For the first time proper atten-
tion is being paid to public health in such matters as dig-
ging wells and providing shoes for poor children.

In the United States one hears, or reads, almost nothing
about one of the most extraordinary features of the Cuban
Revolution— its civic honesty. This is the first honest Gov-
ernment that Cuba has seen since Columbus discovered
the island.

Professor Harry Stark of the University of Miami, in his
book, Social and Economic Frontiers in Latin America,
issued in the summer of 1961, paid tribute to the unaccus-
tomed honesty of Cuba today:

Public corruption was entirely eradicated, especially that
which had always been rampant in the national lottery. The
augmented proceeds from these lotteries were employed to

THE REVOLUTION

build low cost housing. . . . Military personnel was forbidden
to drink alcoholic beverages in public places. Smuggling and
customs house corruptions were ended. Tax collections be-
came more efficient and rigorous. Public begging was sup-
pressed. Many new public works projects were started. . . ,
Noteworthy is the fact that all of this was accomplished with
the maintenance of a high quality performance, with strict
honesty, and with unbelievable speed.

Let it be conceded in all fairness that the accomplishments
of the revolutionary government received almost no news
coverage or recognition, and certainly no praise, in the United
States.

Whether the public works were of high quality or not,
one thing was certain— all the money assigned to a project
went into it. Under all preceding Cuban Administrations
(and the relatively democratic regimes of Grau San
Martin and Prio Socarras were among the worst) from 40
to 60 per cent of the public monies went into the pockets
of government officials and businessmen. General Batista's
regular cut, as I mentioned before, was 35 per cent, with-
out counting what others took.

Integration is another feature of the Cuban scene some-
what neglected by Americans. We must not forget tibat the
so-called "image" of the United States throughout Latin
America is gravely damaged by the continuance of segre-
gation here. We do not get credit for the progress being
made toward integration; we do get the worst kind of
publicity from such incidents as the brutal beating by
whites of the "Freedom Riders" in Alabama in the spring
of 1961.

Negro slaves were imported to Cuba in the first half

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THE CUBAN STORY

o£ the nineteenth century, mainly to work on the sugar
plantations. The aboriginal Indians had died off or been
killed off long before. By 1943 a census listed about one
quarter of the population as Negro or mulatto. There
were no "Jim Crow" laws in Cuba and much intermarriage
in the lower levels of society. However, there definitely
was a "'color line" in society, army, industry, the profes-
sions and politics. The ruling classes in Cuba right up to
1959 were overwhelmingly white. The upper-class society
was almost wholly white. They had strict color bars in
their clubs. Batista, who was of mixed blood, was em-
barrassed when this was sometimes pointed out.

In revolutionary Cuba there are no color bars. The
chief of the Army, for instance, Juan Almeida (who was
with Fidel when I went up to the Sierra Maestra in Feb-
ruary, 1957) is a Negro. There were no Negro high officers
before under the Republic.

It would not have been necessary to call attention to
these features of the Cuban Revolution if they had been
fairly reported to the American people. I do not mean
at all to give the impression that Cuba is now a paradise,
that all is well, that the Revolution is a shining success.

Far from it! Terrible mistakes have been made; some
very bad things have been, and are being, done. I was
one of the first in the United States in 1959 to point to
the absolute power that Fidel Castro had assumed. As I
wrote for Stanford University's Hispanic American Re-
port in August, 1960: "The regime is a dictatorship, with-
out freedom, under the control of one man. Law is an
arbitrary concept." I brought sorrow to my Cuban ad-

114

THE REVOLUTION

mirers when I told an audience of alumni at Columbia
University in June, 1961, that Cuba was then and had
been for some time "a totalitarian police state."

I do virtually all the editorials on Latin America that
appear in The New Jork Times, including those on Cuba.
For nearly two years now these editorials have been
uniformly critical, although they have not paralleled the
emotional and sometimes misinformed interpretation of
most United States newspapers, and they have not seen
the Cuban Revolution in the same terms as those of the
exiles in Miami. Being "pegged" to news items from
Havana and Washington, they did not do justice to the
good features of the Revolution, either, but it has taken
courage on the part of The New York Times to keep its
editorials on Cuba within the bounds of the true situa-
tion.

That situation was especially open to criticism in the
drift of the Castro regime toward and into the commu-
nistic camp. This is the feature of the Cuban Revolution
that has dominated American thinking and emotions, as
well as the policies toward Cuba of the Eisenhower and
Kennedy Administrations. It has not at all played a simi-
lar role in Latin American thinking, as Adlai Stevenson
found on his trip to South America in June, 1961, nor has
Canada or the rest of the world accepted the American
thesis.

The problem that future historians will have to face
lies in the fact that the Castro regime was not com-
munistic in its early stages but gradually moved deeper

THE CUBAN STORY

and deeper Into the Communist camp, and if this trend
continues we will have a Cuban variety of communism.

I do not believe myself that there will be any problem
for these historians on the question of whether Fidel
Castro, Che Guevara, Raul Castro and some other top
leaders were, themselves, Communists. They always de-
nied that they were and there is no evidence to date that
the top three— Fidel, Che and Raul— ever were Commu-
nists in the sense of being members of any Communist
party. Not even the United States White Paper was able
to claim this. It surely should be obvious (although ap-
parently it is not) that if the CIA or the FBI or the Ameri-
can Embassy in Havana or the State Department was
ever able to unearth proof that any of these men were
Communists, they would have proclaimed it triumphantly
to the world. The argument that they might just as well
be Communists is another matter, but this is quite dif-
ferent from saying that they were, or are, Communists.

New evidence may change the picture, but on the evi-
dence available and on my personal knowledge of Fidel
Castro, I have always said and I still say that he was not
and is not a Communist.

The Publisher of The New York Times, Arthur Hays
Sulzberger, was, like many others, puzzled by my insist-
ence and asked me for an explanation after a trip I made
to Cuba in August, 1960. This was my reply:

I have your note asking what my definition of a Communist
is. I have a very simple and straightforward one— and I con-
sider it the only exact one.

A Communist is a man— or woman— who 1) either belongs

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TJbLJS REVOLUTION

openly to the Communist party or 2) is a crypto-Communist
In either case the person takes his orders from his party or
movement, is responsible to it and is an agent of Moscow.

In my opinion it is most important to make this distinction.
Take the Cubans. It may make no difference whatever today
and in practice for the time being, whether they are Reds
or simply doing as the Reds do. In the long run it can make
all the difference in the world, because, if they are not under
Communist discipline, taking orders from the party and Mos-
cow, they can change. They can even turn on the Reds and
destroy them.

The terms communism and Communist are much too loosely
used in the American press and by Americans generally. I
believe that the precise definition I have give above is the
only one we should use in The Times— and as a matter of fact,
I think it is.

The problem, from the beginning, was that Fidel Castro
was making a radical, Leftist, nationalistic revolution that
inevitably brought conflict with the United States. The
old cry: "Our enemy is on the Right! No enemies to the
Left!" heard in the West since the French Revolution was
now being heard in Cuba.

The Batista dictatorship had laid the foundation for the
Communists. In Cuba all the old-line political parties had
been thoroughly discredited or broken up into fragments.
The 26th of July Movement was a congeries of men,
parties and classes, split down the middle by a dividing
line between the Sierra Maestra group, who were out for
a very radical social revolution, and the civic resistance,
which wanted to make social reforms but in a democratic,
evolutionary way.

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THE CUBAN STORY

This left only the Cuban Communists, trained, or-
ganized and ready. Their party kept on functioning from
the Batista era. It was— and is—called the Partido Social-
ista Popular (Popular Socialist Party). It had not helped
Fidel Castro— on the contrary— but it was naturally ready
to help now and, being tolerated, became the only polit-
ical party operating in Cuba. This did not mean that it
even remotely had the sort of power Communist parties
have in Communist countries, especially for the first year
and a half, but American thinking with regard to com-
munism is over-simplified and blinded by emotions, and
this simple and obvious distinction was not made.

As a result, the Cuban Communists were given an im-
portance all out of proportion to the reality. Some of us
kept warning from the beginning that this played right
into their hands. It was exactly what they needed to build
them up and to attract adherents. The psychology of
Fidel Castro and the other young revolutionaries was such
that the more they were attacked for being Communists,
or the dupes of Communists, the more difficult it became
to oppose communism if they wanted to. For Fidel, es-
pecially, to turn against the Reds would have seemed like
truckling to the United States, yielding to American at-
tacks, and he would rather have his throat cut than do
that.

In Cuba, nothing was more helpful to the Reds than the
fact that the American press, radio and television, Con-
gress and many American diplomats and businessmen
conceded victory to the Communists long before they had
won it. We surrendered before we had begun to lose.

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THE REVOLUTION

The first, and probably most damaging, major attack
in this field came from Stuart Novins of the Columbia
Broadcasting System on May 3, 1959. The material had
been gathered in March and April The theme was that
"this Cuban island is today a totalitarian dictatorship and
is rapidly becoming a Communist beachhead in the Carib-
bean."

It was nothing of the sort at that time. Because it be-
came more or less that, one gets the appearance of ac-
curacy and prescience. Yet, anyone studying the text of
the telecast then and now, knowing the facts or even
using common sense, will see that the arguments Novins
was using to "prove" his thesis were feeble to the point
of ludicrousness. This was true of all the commentators
and correspondents who harped on this theme from the
beginning and who now say: "We told you so."

The historian will not have such an easy time of it and
there is no validity, today, in saying: "What's the dif-
ference?" It might have made a lot of difference if there
had been more understanding in the formative stages of
the Cuban Revolution. This is aside from the desirability
of keeping the record straight.

As I remarked earlier, it will never be possible to figure
out the extent to which the young Cuban leaders wanted
Communism and the extent to which they were forced
into reliance on Communism. Those who were closest to
Fidel Castro in 1959 could feel assured that neither he
certainly, nor, with some doubts, any of the men in posi-
tions of control were Communists, and that they had a

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THE CUBAN STORY

Cuban revolution, not a Communist revolution. This will
surely be the verdict of history.

However, it was always obvious that there were many
Communists at secondary and lower levels. They naturally
supported the revolutionary government from the begin-
ning. Fidel, on his part, was making a revolution in which
he had to attack the conservative, propertied, business
classes on the Right. He asked why he should gratui-
tously attack the Communists on his Left when they were
supporting him and when, as he confidently believed, they
were weak and unimportant? He wanted to unite all the
forces of the Left.

This was the position for many months, until he and
his top advisers became convinced that the answer to
their revolutionary problems lay in the methods of totali-
tarian communism. I would place the final decision on
this, so far as Fidel was concerned, in the late summer
or early autumn of 1960. So far as Che Guevara and Raul
Castro were concerned, it would have come sooner and
they undoubtedly influenced Fidel.

His early calculations were logical and understandable.
He did not want a Communist revolution and I know
what a low opinion he had of the Cuban Reds. He was
not underestimating them personally, with the possible
exception of Rafael Rodriguez, but he was underestimat-
ing the efficiency, skill and experience that lay in the
Communist technique.

I suppose I was one of the first to warn him and all the
young leaders of that danger, for I began in January,
1959, and was hard at it the last time I saw Fidel, which

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THE REVOLUTION

was in August, 1960. The most effective argument, I
thought, was to impress upon them all that they could
have a Cuban revolution, or a Communist revolution, but
not both. I pointed out that the Reds were not working
for Cuba or for Fidel and that their revolution was not his
revolution. I was myself underestimating the danger, be-
cause I believed that the young revolutionaries recog-
nized these threats and would fight against them in the
showdown. I now think it is possible that they can have
a communistic type of revolution that is also Cuban and
Latin American.

The argument that the Cuban Reds had helped Batista,
not the 26th of July Movement, was beside the point, in
the same way that there was no use pointing out how the
trade-union leaders had supported Batista. Fidel needed
the urban workers and he thought he needed the Reds.
The Communists really were useful to him in 1959. That
was safe so long as he did not become dependent on them.

Fidel and I always spoke frankly to each other and he
took criticism from me that no one else would have
dared to utter. He knew that I was sympathetic, under-
standing and a friend, and since I was old enough to be
his father, he respected my age. He is a normally poor
listener, but he used to listen to me— and to my wife when
we were both in Havana.

I mention this simply to bolster my argument that Fidel
Castro had no desire or intention to go the Communist
way until events, pressures, perhaps necessity, drove him
that way. It was not a previously calculated or aa in-
evitable development.

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THE CUBAN STORY

Historians will have to ask themselves how much the
American attitude and policies helped to force Fidel Cas-
tro in this direction. If this was what he wanted all along,
there was nothing the United States could have done to
prevent it. If he did not, as many of us believe, then the
position taken almost from the beginning by the Ameri-
can press, radio, television, Congress, Pentagon, State
Department, the business world and so forth, helped to
build up communism and drive Cuba irresistibly into the
Communist corner.

There were forces at work in this Cuban drama beyond
the control of the Castro regime or of Washington. The
leader of any revolution conjures up a storm, and it soon
becomes a question whether he is directing it or being
driven by it.

The revolutionary chief who wants to sail between the
Scylla of the United States and the Charybdis of the So-
viet bloc, as Premier Castro did, has an infinitely harder
task than President Nasser of the United Arab Republic
in a similar situation. Nasser did not have an internal
situation like Cuba's; his choice was not so limited; his
Communist party was of no account, and his social revo-
lution was not nearly so drastic. In the pinch, he did not
become completely dependent on the Soviet bloc, eco-
nomically, as Fidel Castro has been forced to do.

Here in the United States, since the Second World War,
there has been a tendency to equate revolution with com-
munism. We were saying, in effect: the Communists are
revolutionaries, the Cubans are revolutionaries; therefore

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THE REVOLUTION

the Cubans are Communists. They were, with secbndary
exceptions, nothing of the sort, but the belief persisted.

Fidel Castro never realized the intensity of American
fears, distrust and dislike of communism. No Latin
American understands this, because the cold war has
never affected the area directly. Moreover, the Cubans
forget that the United States has kept its enemies away
from the Western Hemisphere since 1815. Unlike the
Europeans, we are not psychologically adjusted to having
formidable enemies across a river or a boundary line. The
mere threat of communism on our doorstep in Cuba was
enough to set up a powerful reaction in the United States.

Americans do not realize it, but their attitude toward
communism is just about unique in the world. Europeans,
whose danger from communism is greater than ours, con-
sider us positively hysterical on the subject. It is little
short of idiotic that we should think communism is a
great internal menace in the United States. McCarthyism
had the abnormality of a disease, just as its contemporary
equivalent of John Birchism has.

The shadow of Guatemala hung over Cuba from the
beginning. The Guatemalans, in 1944, had overthrown a
typical Latin American dictator, General Jorge Ubico.
The major economic role in Guatemala was played by the
United Fruit Company and bananas. The young revolu-
tionaries were liberal, radical, nationalistic but not, in
those early stages, pro-Communist. They were simply
tolerant of the Reds.

The Communists worked cleverly; the Americans stu-
pidly. We put ourselves in the position of opposing social

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THE CUBAN STORY

reforms, leaving the field to the Reds. As in Cuba, our
diplomacy was appallingly amateurish and reactionary.
The Communists gathered strength; we registered alarm.
The Central Intelligence Agency set to work. We realize
now the extent to which Secretary John Foster and his
brother, Allen Dulles, used to work together.

Here, too, a hostile and ill-informed American press
helped to create an emotional public opinion. This, in
turn, worked on Congress and, ultimately, on the State
Department. Other factors were, of course, at work in
Guatemala, but the American attitude would, by itself,
have had the effect of strengthening the Guatemalan
Reds and making a United States reaction inevitable.

We intervened by helping an obscure Guatemalan
Colonel, Carlos Castillo Armas, to overthrow the Arbenz
regime. It was easy because the Guatemalan Army had
not been subverted by communism, as some of us were
trying to make the American public and State Depart-
ment understand. That wise statesman, Jose Figueres, ex-
President of Costa Rica, felt sure the Guatemalans could
have handled the problem by themselves if we had been
more sensible.

Instead we mobilized all our efforts and propaganda,
pistol-packing American Ambassador included, and ar-
ranged to throw President Jdcobo Arbenz and the Com-
munists out. (Let it be said in passing that Guatemala's
social and economic problems are yet to be solved; it is
one of the many countries where the United States fears
an attempted Fidelista revolution. )

It should have been crystal clear that Cuba was no

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Guatemala, that the Cubans were not Guatemalans and
that Fidel Castro was not Jacobo Arbenz. If the CIA was
looking at anything crystal it was a crystal ball.

Fidel Castro and the others knew that elements in the
United States would want to repeat the Guatemalan ex-
perience. Although its effect on our Latin American rela-
tions and the Latin attitude toward us remain very bad,
the event was rated as a triumph for Allen Dulles and the
CIA, and our newspapers still treat it as such.

A number of writers have tried with varying success
to analyze the process whereby Cuba went deeply into
the Communist camp. The Communists have a technique
for such situations and it was applied skillfully. They
work from the bottom up through key features like educa-
tion, trade unions, police, the army.

The three top leaders, as I said before, were not Com-
munists, but two of diem— Che Guevara and Raul Castro
—were pro-Communist. Fidel, I believe, was instinctively
and by conviction anti-Communist for a long time. The
main factor, with him, was that he did not care much
what the Communists did. The business of keeping the
Revolution and the country going was so fantastically
burdensome that he at first put the Communist problem
in a minor category.

I had seen something like this happen in Spain during
the Civil War. Premier Juan Negrin was no Communist
and had no intention of allowing the Reds to get control
of the key points of governmental power, but aside from
that he did not care what they did. Because the Soviet
Union was the only country helping the Spanish Loyalists,,

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THE CUBAN STORY

the Reds became more and more powerful internally.
This, also, is what has happened in Cuba (and Che
Guevara warned me early that it could happen).

For the purposes of this book, the basic facts to keep
in mind are simple enough. This was, essentially, a revo-
lution without a doctrine. At the beginning there was a
vague philosophical content labeled "Humanism," but it
was not original or precise enough for formulation as a
system. In these matters, as Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian
sociologist, pointed out a long time ago, you first have the
concrete fact and then the abstraction. In the case of
Cuba, the concrete facts, as they were performed oppor-
tunistically from day to day, led into the abstraction of
Marxism (a special form of it) and the methods of totali-
tarianism, communistic style.

The Cuban Revolution has been taking form day by
day under fierce pressures and with a desperate sense of
haste. It could not invent any new philosophy. Anyway,
Fidel Castro never was an original political thinker.
Moreover, it was a revolution without a party and that,
too, was a reason why the Communists were able to move
in so effectively. In theory, Fidel could have developed
the 26th of July Movement into a one-party system such
as Mexico has with her Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI) but, as I pointed out before, Fidel knew— or
thought— that middle- and upper-class elements in the
26th of July Movement would not go for the radical social
revolution he had in mind. This left the field clear for the
Communist party. A forthcoming merger of the two groups
was announced by Fidel on July 26, 1961. The "United

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THE REVOLUTION

Party of Cuba's Socialist Revolution" is a creature of the
Communist wing, not of the 26th of July Movement.

In this matter of communism, as in everything else
connected with the Cuban Revolution, one must avoid
over-simplifying. The factors and pressures that drove the
Castro regime into the Communist camp were enor-
mously complicated. Besides the features mentioned,
there was the whole complex of relations with the United
States, the historic factors, the economic problems, the
pressures of the cold war and by no means least, the
character of the young men making the Cuban Revolu-
tion.

I say they had no intention or desire of making a Com-
munist revolution. For all of 1959, Cubans put a sup-
plementary stamp on their letters to the United States
with these words in English:

Our Revolution is NOT COMMUNIST
Our Revolution is HUMANIST

The Cubans only want the right to an education,

the right to work, the right to eat without fear,

the right to PEACE, JUSTICE, FREEDOM

At the trial of Major Huber Matos, commander of the
Camaguey garrison, for treason in December, 1959,
Premier Castro protested:

"Ours is not a Communist revolution. Ours is, I admit,
a radical revolution— probably the most radical in Cuban
history." He also said that his regime was "neither scien-
tifically nor theoretically communistic." He had said the

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same things, even more strongly, during his trip to the
United States in April, 1959— and he meant them.

A year later, Fidel was talking differently, but these
were honest statements at the time they were made. It
was, in fact, nearly a year later that Che Guevara made a
sensational—and often misquoted— statement on Marxism.

"On the question of whether we are Marxists or con-
sider ourselves to be Marxists," he said in a speech, *1
can tel you the following. If a man falls out of a tree a
number of times, he makes certain deductions, draws cer-
tain conclusions, and on the basis of these, he may be
considered a Newtonian.

"In precisely this way, we have made certain dis-
coveries about the underlying conditions that relate to
our situation. If these principles that we have deduced
are Marxist principles, then in this sense it is possible to
call us Marxists."

Che is no doctrinaire. I have never met anyone who
more strikingly embodies the characteristics of the rebel
than the Argentine, Ernesto Guevara. He instinctively
rebels against society, country, Church and every other
institution. It never was necessary to interpret his ideas
and actions in terms of communism. His life, his charac-
ter and the events in which he participated all put him
on the Communist side, but if circumstances change he
will have no emotional or intellectual problem whatever
in becoming anti-Communist. He called himself, in an
interview with Laura Bergquist of Look magazine, pub-
lished on November 8, 1960, a "pragmatic revolutionary."

So far as I could see, his one and only loyalty— sincere

128

THE REVOLUTION

and overriding— was his admiration and affection for
Fidel Castro. This dates back to their first association in
Mexico when the landing was being planned. Che is far
and away the most intelligent of the men around Fidel,
and he has the un-Cuban characteristic of being well or-
ganized in his work. He is unquestionably the most in-
fluential person in Cuba aside from Fidel Castro, but it
must never be forgotten that his power and influence on
events are delegated by Fidel He has gained his position
because of his abilities and persuasiveness, and because
his ideas conform to Fidel's.

Raul Castro likewise gets his power and influence from
Fidel and would be nothing without his older brother. He
is unattractive and unpopular, but a first-rate administra-
tor. Both these young men are intensely anti-Yankee, for
different reasons, and both were pro-Communist from
early student days. The fact that Raul attended a World
Youth Festival organized by the Communists in Prague,
when he was twenty-one, and that he spent a few months
behind the Iron Curtain at the time, has been taken by
Americans, naively, as "proof " that he was Communist.
As with other matters, one can argue that Raul Castro
might as well have been Communist, but this is another
argument

At the Huber Matos trial, during his testimony, Raul
Castro said "[if] at any time the Communists place them-
selves against the Revolution, we will fight the Com-
munists/' Of course, the Reds would not and did not.

What was more to the point was a statement Che
Guevara made to some Australian journalists in Havana

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on July 13, 1960. While Cuba is grateful to the Soviet
Union, he said, any attempt by the Russians to establish
a Communist satellite in Cuba "would be resisted to the
last drop of blood/'

This should not be doubted, although, of course, the
contention that Cuba is a Communist satellite lies at the
heart of the United States policies toward the Castro re-
gime. I would deny it in the sense that the Castro Gov-
ernment takes no orders from Moscow, often, in fact,
disconcerts Moscow by its policies, and because I feel
sure that the young Cuban revolutionaries did not fight,
as they saw it, against "Yankee imperialism" just to fall
under the yoke of Russian imperialism.

On the other hand, the way events and our policies de-
veloped, the Castro regime became dependent on the
Soviet bloc, especially after we cut off their sugar import
quota in July, 1960. At the same time the Cuban leaders
convinced themselves that something similar to the Com-
munist methods—something they called "Socialism"— pro-
vided the answers to their problems.

"Every day my admiration for Lenin grows/' Fidel
Castro told K. S. Karol in an interview that appeared in
the English weekly, the New Statesman, on May 19, 1961.
"The more I know about his work and his life and above
all the more I understand the revolution, the more I
admire Lenin. Only now can I grasp the difficulties Lenin
had to overcome and the magnitude of the heritage he
bequeathed humanity. . , . It's not the same thing to talk
about revolution in theory— and actually to carry one out
oneself."

THE REVOLUTION

So, by 1961, Cuba had become (to coin a word) com-
munistoid. It was not communism as Moscow and Peiping
understood it, but it was communism as Washington un-
derstood it. It was not socialism as understood and prac-
ticed in Great Britain and Western Europe, but it was a
form of socialism.

It had borrowed its ideas and methods from Iron Cur-
tain Europe, but it remained a Cuban and Latin Ameri-
can revolution. Above all, it remained Fidel Castrc/s
revolution.

CHAPTER FOUR

Fidel Castro

No ONE CAN know the Cuban Revolution who does not
know Fidel Castro. I had a unique opportunity to get to
know him, to have his confidence, respect, friendship,
even his ear— all of which, obviously, made no difference
to what he did or what he believed. I wish I could say
that I influenced the Cuban Revolution; it would have
been a very different revolution if I had been able to.

Not that I tried, especially, but it was impossible not
to argue or to say and write what I believed. Many people
thought that Fidel would listen to me, and only to me.
He would listen— and then do what he always had it in
his mind to do at that particular time.

One of the minor aberrations of the first weeks of the
Revolution in January, 1959, was an attempt— not by me
—to get me named United States Ambassador to Cuba.
Among the Havana newspapers that picked up the idea
was El Pais, run by Guillermo Martinez Marques, ex-

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President of the Inter-Ainerican Press Association. On
January 13, 1959, the Havana Post ran a front-page story:

Jules Dubois, Chicago Tribune correspondent currently in
Cuba, went on record yesterday as endorsing Herbert Matthews,
editorial writer of The New York Times as United States Am-
bassador to Cuba to fill the spot vacated by Earl E. T. Smith.

Dubois, President of the Committee on Freedom of the
Press of the IAPA, sent his recommendation in a cable to Vice
President Nixon and several other high Washington officials.

Others receiving a copy of the Dubois cable included Press
Secretary Hagerty and Senators Morse and Aiken.

Commenting on the recommendation Matthews said: "It is
the gesture of a friend but I don't think it possible or con-
venient"

In fact, it was impossible and would have been quite
wrong, although I take a sardonic pleasure now in look-
ing back on the episode. Actually, it is important for an
envoy to be uncommitted. Considering how involved I
had become, I am sure I would not have been a desirable
candidate.

There was a point, however, in seeking an ambassador
who understood what had happened and who had the
respect and friendship of Fidel Castro. I have often
thought that Cuban-American relations could have taken
a different turn if we had had such an envoy in the first
six months or more of 1959. But diplomacy is not like
that any more.

In any event, the important factor then, and later—
never sufficiently grasped in the United States— was the
overwhelming role that Fidel Castro played. It really was

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FIDEL CASTRO

his revolution, as I stated before. He has been driven by
the force of events outside his control, but he has also,
himself, been the^ major driving force of the revolution
inside Cuba. It was within his power to give the revolu-
tion, to a considerable extent, the direction, the pace, the
tone and the intensity that it has taken.

In the United States he was underrated, ridiculed and
misunderstood, and we have paid a heavy price for this
folly. One of the things for which I can genuinely claim
credit in this Cuban affair is to have recognized from ifeef
beginning, up in the jungles of the Sierra Maestra on
February 17, 1957, that this was a man of remarkable
qualities. A week after he reached Havana in triumph I
wrote for The Times s "News of the Week" section:

"Whatever one wants to think, everybody here seems
agreed that Dr. Castro is one of the most extraordinary
figures ever to appear on the Latin American scene. He is
by any standards a man of destiny/*

This was the period, just before the executions of the
"war criminals" began, when the American press was
praising and romanticizing Fidel Castro as if he were a
knight in shining armor who had come to Havana on a
white horse and who was going to make democracy, bring
social justice but otherwise let things go on as before.
Some of this rosy aura still hung around Fidel when he
came to the United States in April, 1959, at the invitation
of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. That, his
efforts to please and his terrific personality brought him
a truly friendly reception.

So, Americans have been saying ever since: "We

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THE CUBAN STORY

praised and welcomed him at first; we wanted to be
friends, but look at the way he treated us!"

In reality, Americans were welcoming a figure who did
not exist, expecting what could not and would not hap-
pen, and then blaming Fidel Castro for their own blind-
ness and ignorance. All of us have much reason to feel
reproachful and critical about many of the things Fidel
has done. The revolution has not gone the way we hoped,
but with knowledge and understanding, one could always
realize why things happened the way they did, what
forces were operating to make developments understand-
able, and how that incredible young man must have felt
and thought to act the way he did.

"All the world's a stage" and we have to take these
leading characters as they come on, watch them, applaud
or hiss until the curtain goes down.

Then, a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, . . .

Fidel Castro was born with some of the wild qualities
that we ascribe to jungle animals like lions and tigers.
His rebelliousness, essentially, is not against; it is an ex-
pression of independence, freedom, pride and power— the
power to be alone, at the top, and to meet all challengers
with a ruthlessness and cruelty that is amoral, almost im-
personal. In this one respect, I thought Fidel to be like
Batista.

I mentioned before how the manager of the United
Fruit Company's vast sugar plantation in Oriente Prov-

136

FIDEL CASTRO

ince, adjacent to the property owned by Angel Castro,
Fidel's father, told me of remembering Fidel as a child-
wild, husky, unruly, one of a healthy brood that swarmed
over the farm lands,

The father, Angel, was an immigrant from Galicia,
Spain, who started as a piek-and-shovel worker on the
United Fruit plantation. By hard work, thrift and shrewd-
ness he acquired property of his own and it was on his
sugar plantation that the sixth of his nine children, Fidel,
was bom on August 13, 1926. The family prospered, so
much so that he was able to send his children to the best
schools and when he died in 1956, each child is believed
to have inherited more than $80,000.

Fidel attended the Jesuit preparatory school of Belen,
in Havana, where his teacher, with remarkable presci-
ence, predicted greatness for him in his graduation report.

A picture of him at that time was given to Eric Sevareid
in Rio de Janeiro and published in a column in the New
York Post on May 15, 1961. It was one of those flashes
that illuminate a whole character and is reprinted here,
with permission:

The other night I sat in a Brazilian patio with a Cuban
lawyer who had gone to school with Castro. He told me the
story of 16-year-old Fidel and the mountain:

"So the professor said to me, you go and talk Fidel out of
this crazy notion to climb the mountain. So I went to Fidel
and in 30 minutes he had talked me into joining his expedition.
So two of us rode the train with Fidel three, four hours. We
got off at a village. Where is the mountain, Fidel?* we asked
him. 'This way/ he said, 'Just follow me/ So we walk, we walk
all night. In the morning there is no mountain.

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THE CUBAN STORY

"We walk all day. At night there is still no mountain and we
have to sleep, 'How do we sleep here in the jungle?' we ask
Fidel. We have all these tents/ said Fidel. We struggle with
the tents and say, "Fidel, how do we make the tents work?'
And he shrugs his shoulders and says, 'How do I know about
tents?* So we lie on the ground with the canvas over us like
blankets. In the morning we have no food and Fidel says, "We
find food some way, I guess/ So we eat some fruit on the way,
but we are very hungry. We walk all day again and sleep the
same way but we find the mountain/'

"Did you climb it?" I asked.

"Of course we climb it. You cannot stop Fidel, you cannot
argue with Fidel. But the thing was when we get down, we
find there is a smooth road right from the railroad to the foot
of the mountain. This Fidel, he gets where he is going, but I
tell you, he never knows how, he don't care how; to make
plans is a bore to Fidel. He just goes, goes and you got to go
with him, or too bad/'

Fidel entered Havana University in 1945, at the age of
nineteen, in the Faculty of Law. Put charitably, he was a
wild young man, but his enemies never put it charitably.
During an interview with President Batista in June, 1957,
I asked the General if he ever considered coming to terms
with Fidel Castro.

"Mr. Matthews," General Batista replied, "do you seri-
ously believe that after all the crimes this man, Castro,
has committed, beginning in his student days when he
killed two men, and continuing in Mexico, as well as
Cuba, the Government should forget his acts and enter
into political deals with him? It is difficult to believe that
anyone, save a few of Castro's admirers, would expect the
Government to sit down with this criminal and work out

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FIDEL CASTRO

an arrangement which would grant him special privileges
because of his past crimes/'

Fidel is also accused of having been a Communist since
his student days, with special reference to the fact that
he and a fellow student were in Bogota in April, 1948,
during the great uprising known as the Bogotazo. This was
during the Ninth Inter-American Conference when Sec-
retary of State George C. Marshall headed the American
delegation. At the hearings of the Eastland-Dodd Senate
Internal Security Subcommittee the Bogotazo kept being
brought up, especially by our ex-Ambassadors. It was
sarcastically or reproachfully wondered how I could have
written so favorably of Fidel Castro knowing, as they
said, that he always had been a Red.

Of course, I knew nothing of the sort, but I did know
what there really was to be known of these episodes in
Fidel's youth, having naturally checked on them as early
and as often as I could.

At Havana University Fidel was a close friend of Emilia
Tro, one of the founders of the Union Insurredonal Revo-
lucionaria (UIR), a terrorist organization. During Cas-
tro's association with the UIR he was arrested several
times in connection with political murders allegedly per-
petrated by the group, but he was never held or con-
victed of any crime. Tro was killed in September, 1947,
during a factional dispute within the UIR and soon after-
ward Fidel left the organization. There is no evidence,
as Batista put it, that "he killed two men" or killed any-
body. He was in Havana at this period and the police
would hardly have let him get away with murder.

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Incidentally, 1947 was also the year In which the
twenty-year-old Fidel took part in the abortive Cayo
Confites plot against Generalissimo Trujillo of the
Dominican Republic. The Cuban Government broke the
expedition up before it got away from the Cuban coast
and Fidel had to swim to freedom.

I saw an intelligence report of this period which de-
scribed Fidel as "a typical example of a young Cuban of
good background who, because of lack of parental control
or real education, may soon become a full-fledged gang-
ster." This was a period of Cuban history, during the
presidency of Prio Socarr&s, when gangsterism flourished.
Actually, Fidel never was the gangster type.

The Eogotazo came in April, 1948. I have a photostatic
copy, from the files of the Cuban National Police, of a
document dated March 15, 1948, on the stationery of the
University Student Federation (FEU). It is headed (in
my translation): "First Steps of the Latin American
Movement Against the European Colonization of This
Continent/* The text lists seven points of a resolution
launching an "anti-imperialist struggle" and deciding to
send three student delegations to a number of Latin
American countries to prepare for an Inter- American Con-
gress the following October.

**To carry out this project," reads Point Six, "prepara-
tory sessions will be held beginning the first week of
April, with the object of preparing our theme, as well
as other aspects connected with the organization of said
Congress. The sessions referred to will take place in
Bogota and with that in mind the Student Federation of

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FIDEL CASTRO

Cuba will arrange an agreement in Colombia whereby
that city [Bogota] shall be the seat of the preliminary
negotiations."

It was noted in the final point that the preparatory
student meeting would coincide with the Inter- American
Conference and thus have a Latin American audience.
The two Cuban students chosen were Fidel Castro, who
was President of the Law School student body, and Rafael
del Pino (whom Fidel was to have sentenced to thirty
years in prison as a counter-revolutionary in 1960). I see
little reason to doubt that there was some Communist
inspiration behind the Movement and the proposed Con-
gress, since there usually was in such cases, but this did
not make the two youths Reds. They indignantly denied
being Communists, or having any connection with Com-
munists, on their return to Havana, and no proof was
ever adduced to the contrary.

The charges that Fidel knew there was going to be an
uprising and that he helped to prepare it are quite simply
absurd. The Colombian Government employed Scotland
Yard to make an investigation of the Bogotazo. The re-
port of the mission, which was headed by Sir Norman
Smith, for some reason was not published until April 11,
1961— thirteen years after the event. It brought out the
fact that the assassination of the Liberal Party leader,
Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, at one twenty in the afternoon of
April 9, 1948, was done by a lunatic, Juan Roa Sierra, who
had no connection with any of the three political parties
—Liberal, Conservative or Communist.

It was this incident that sparked the uprising for which

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the Communists were blamed by Secretary of State
Marshall and almost everybody else. What happened
was that the Reds took advantage of the mob fury
aroused by the assassination of a popular figure during a
period of political tension between the Liberals and Con-
servatives. (The Government of the time was Conserva-
tive. )

Fidel had a boyish crush on Gait&n, and Sir Norman's
report brought out the remarkable coincidence that Cas-
tro and del Pino had an appointment with Gait&n for one
o'clock on the afternoon of April 9. It was never kept, of
course, Gait4n being still out in the street taking part in a
demonstration when he was killed.

Jules Dubois of the Chicago Tribune was in Bogota for
the conference and hence was an eyewitness to the dra-
matic events of the next few days. The account he gives
in his book, Fidel Castro, absolves the two Cuban stu-
dents of any role in organizing the uprising that followed
or of any connection with the Communists in Bogota.

Sir Norman Smith's report bears out this interpretation.
Castro and del Pino reached Bogota in the last days of
March, he wrote, and put up at the Hotel Claridge. (The
report continually refers to them as "los dos Cubanos*—
the two Cubans.) They had made a nuisance of them-
selves at a cultural meeting in the Teatro de Coldn on
the night of April 3 by showering leaflets containing
propaganda against the United States from the balcony
of the theater into the orchestra. When the police checked
on them the next day they found that the two youths did
not have proper Colombian visas in their passports, al-

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FIDEL CASTRO

though they had registered on the day they entered the
country. They were told to report to the Police Head-
quarters on April 5, which they neglected to do. When
their hotel room was searched, more propaganda leaflets
were found. The young men were located the next day,
April 6, $nd taken to the Prefecture of Security where
they were admonished and told to stop their hostile acts.

(Let us note in passing that already in 1948, at the
age of 21, Fidel Castro was anti- Yankee and agitating
against "Yankee imperialism.")

During the Bogotazo he and his companion, Rafael del
Pino, got hold of arms and were seen by the police shoot-
ing—at whom or what was never ascertained. Sir Norman
Smith's report says they returned to their hotel on the
night of April 9 "bringing a large quantity of arms and
staying there for many hours, talking on the phone, in
English, with various people/' This must have been del
Pino, who had American as well as Cuban citizenship.
Fidel spoke no English at the time and still has no fluency
in the language.

The two youths stayed at the Hotel Claridge until the
thirteenth, when they took refuge in the Cuban Embassy.
Evidently, the Colombian police were after them. The
head of the Cuban delegation to the Inter-American Con-
ference was the well-known lawyer-diplomat, Guillermo
Belt, who not only gave them refuge but arranged for
them to fly back to Havana in a cargo plane that had
brought pedigreed cattle to Bogota. Belt was to regret
this act of kindness later.

In spite of his wildness, Fidel stayed at the University

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THE CUBAN STORY

of Havana and studied enough to get degrees in Law,
International Law and Social Sciences. Hence his right
to be called "Dr. Castro/7

After graduation in 1950, he began a law practice and
specialized in defending men and women whom he con-
sidered to be the victims of social injustice. He joined the
Partido del Pueblo Cubano, better known as the Ortodoxo
party, then headed by his hero, Eddy Chibds. Fidel was
standing for election to the House of Representatives
from Havana Province as an Ortodoxo candidate when
General Batista staged his successful garrison revolt. He
tried in vain to take legal action against Batista and then,
typically, turned to action.

This was when he organized and led the mad attack
with about 165 young men, nearly all university students
and the two girls, Haydee Santamaria and Melba Her-
nandez, on July 26, 1953. About this oft-told story it is
only necessary to keep a few facts in mind for our pur-
poses.

Of the hundred-odd men in Castro's force killed by
Batista's soldiers, only ten were killed in the attack. The
others were slaughtered in cold blood after surrendering,
some after torture. Abel Santamaria's eyes were torn out
and brought to his sister, Haydee, to get her to talk—
which she did not do.

Fidel escaped to the Sierra Maestra where he was not
saved by the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Monsenor
Enrique P6rez Serantes, as the persistent myth has it.
Orders were out to kill Fidel on sight but the young

144

FIDEL CASTRO

Lieutenant, Pedro Sania, who captured Fidel, disobeyed
orders and brought him in alive.

After eleven weeks, incommunicado, Fidel was put on
trial alone before the Tribunal de Urgenda in a room of
the Hospital Civil, on October 16, 1953. The public was
excluded except for a few reporters who could publish
nothing, because of the censorship, but who took down
Fidel's long and impassioned self-defense stenographi-
cally, word for word. One of the journalists gave a copy
of the speech to "a group of Cuban intellectuals united
by common sympathies and admiration" who first pub-
lished it in June, 1954. It is the now famous exposition of
his revolutionary ideas, as well as his defense, known for
its concluding words: "History will absolve me."

Fidel, Raul Castro and some other survivors were sen-
tenced to fifteen years* imprisonment and sent to the Isle
of Pines. In May, 1955, lulled by internal apathy, follow-
ing a farcical presidential election, General Batista gave
an amnesty to all political prisoners, Fidel Castro in-
cluded. By a curious process of reasoning, the fact that
Fidel's life was spared by Batista, along with some others,
is put forward by many American commentators who
ought to know better as evidence that Batista was more
civilized and merciful than Fidel Castro, who executed
Batistianos and some counter-revolutionaries. The slaugh-
ter of the captured students in the 26th of July attack,
and the fact that in the two years of the insurrection
Batista had thousands of Cubans killed, often after tor-
ture, is conveniently forgotten.

Fidel went right on with his revolutionary activities but

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THE CUBAN STORY

soon had to flee to Mexico. In October, 1955, he went to
the United States on an organizational and fund-raising
tour for his 26th of July Movement. After Fidel had made
some speeches in New York and Florida, the Cuban Gov-
ernment protested and the United States immigration
authorities cut short Fidel's stay and canceled his visa for
future visits.

The amount of funds and arms he received from the
United States during his insurrection in the Sierra Maestra
has always been exaggerated. American authorities, quite
properly, did their best to prevent the shipment of arms,
and generally succeeded.

It was from Mexico, in November, 1956, that Fidel
Castro made the almost disastrous "invasion" landing of
December 2, which took him into the Sierra Maestra.

A revealing picture of the Fidel Castro of his Mexican
period was drawn for the Mexico City magazine, Hu-
manismo, in the January-February issue of 1958. It was
written by Teresa Casuso, who was a member of the
Cuban Embassy staff in 1956. She later became a delegate
for the Castro Government at the United Nations, but
broke with Fidel in 1960 and afterwards wrote some very
different and harsher judgments about her former hero
and his revolution, The first article was about Mi Amiga
Fidel Castro.

"If Fidel were preparing a voyage to Mars," Teresa
Casuso wrote, "and you did not want to go to Mars, keep
away from him. Because, otherwise, you would soon find
yourself on the way to Mars, And what is more, you might
get there. . . .

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FIDEL CASTRO

"I have seen him in love. . . . He is the perfect lover.
. . . He is so masculine with women that he makes them
feel beautiful and satisfied in his company, even just as
a friend. ... He has the physical resistance of a Titan. . . .
Physically, as well as mentally, he is very healthy and
athletic. He swims like a champion; his only vice is to
smoke cigars; he doesn't drink alcohol. Although he likes
women very much and very normally, he is hopeless in a
party. And he does not even know how to dance!"

"Fidel," Teresa concludes, "is like a dormant volcano."

The volcano exploded, much to the dismay of Teresa
Casuso and a great many other admirers. As is the habit
with volcanoes, it was uncontrollable.

In those two years in the Sierra Maestra, at least, Fidel
Castro showed a patience and self -discipline that no one
believed he possessed. The insurrection, with its tri-
umphant entry into Havana on January 8, 1959, was noth-
ing less than an epic. Whatever else history does to him,
that much can never be taken away.

My wife and I caught up with him in Camaguey on his
wildly joyous progress from Oriente Province. On the
night of January 12 we saw him again at Camp Columbia
and I sent this interview to The Times the next day:

The only word that adequately describes Fidel Castro's con-
dition at the moment is groggy. Uninterrupted work and public
adulation over four grueling days has made him punch drunk.
Last evening, talking intimately to him, one got a sense that
for the first time he is appalled by the weight of the burden
now placed on his shoulders. It seemed as if he had just

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THE CUBAN STORY

realized that his life from now on is not going to be his and
that he must live constantly in a goldfish bowl.

"I haven't had a minute to myself" he complained "They
won't leave me alone. Thousands of things are brought to me
that I do not know about. When I tried to get away from the
crowd by going from one place to another in a tank, people
climbed into and on the tank with me before I knew it.

"I am one of those people who live in the present. It isn't in
my temperament to plan what I am going to do after I finish
the task in front of me. . . ."

As the writer was taking his leave Dr. Castro introduced four
young bearded soldiers from Las Villas Province who had been
waiting.

"You see," he said in despair, "these are my comrades in
arms whom I've been trying to see— and they have been wait-
ing for me for thirty-two hours. How can this continue?"

At the end, as we stood up, Fidel asked what I thought of
what had been happening. I said it was wonderful and a great
event.

"Back in February, 1957, when I saw you," I said, "I wrote a
lot of good things about you and the 26th of July Movement/1

<CI did not disappoint you?" he interrupted.

"No," I replied "and that was the greatest satisfaction of all
for me."

It was, indeed, a great satisfaction, although I have
had some disappointments, as well as satisfactions, since.

Germ&n Arciniegas, Colombia's noted historian, jour-
nalist and diplomat, in an interview with El Tiempo of
Bogota, printed on February 2, I960, gave expression to
one widely held point of view about me and Fidel Castro
in Latin America.

"Before leaving our country" [to take up his post as
Ambassador to Rome], El Tiempo wrote, "German Ar-

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FIDEL CASTRO

ciniegas told ns that he had received a letter from Her-
bert Matthews of The New York Times. The great jour-
nalist of that newspaper was the first to interview Fidel
Castro in the Sierra Maestra. He gave so much publicity
to the heroic struggle that many people called the con-
flict against the Batista dictatorship "Herbert Matthews'
revolution.*

"Matthews, in his letter to Arciniegas was still defend-
ing Fidel Castro— the Fidel Castro of today.

"Arciniegas, in talking to us, made this comment: It is
the case of a father who does not want to recognize the
errors of his son/ *

As a matter of fact, I can see plenty of errors, and the
last time I saw Fidel in Havana he conceded that he and
his associates had made many mistakes.

As I was saying from the beginning, no one knows the
Cuban Revolution who does not know Fidel Castro. Yet
his is a character of such complexity, such contradictions,
such emotionalism, such irrationality, such unpredicta-
bility that no one can reaEy know him.

The men who make history have to be extraordinary
men. The man in the street, the journalist, the opponent,
are tempted to dismiss such men in their lives by applying
comforting labels such as paranoiac, megalomaniac,
manic-depressive or— in our day, depending on the politi-
cal complexion— Communist or Fascist.

This is a waste of time with Fidel Castro. He is not
certifiably insane; he is certainly not a Fascist, and it is
most unlikely that he was, or is today, a Communist. He is
himself, and he fits no category, although one can get

THE CUBAN STORY

some vague help from the knowledge that he is a Galician
Spaniard by blood, a Cuban by birth and upbringing and
a creature— a very wild creature— of our times.

He will be written about as long as historians write
about hemispheric affairs. No single person has made
such a mark on Latin American history since the Wars of
Independence ISO years ago. Yet there will be no unani-
mous analysis of his character, not 100 or 200 or 500 years
from now.

I would not for one second compare him with Queen
Elizabeth I or Napoleon in importance, but Elizabeth was
an example of a towering figure working in the fiercest
light of publicity in her day and she is, and always will be,
an enigma to history. She was to her closest associates. So
will Fidel Castro be. Historians still argue whether Napo-
leon was motivated by greed for power and glory, or
really had the ideals of the French Revolution at heart,
In the same way, historians are going to argue whether
Fidel Castro wanted to cany the Cuban Revolution into
the Communist camp, or was forced to do so by American
policies and attitudes and the compulsion of events be-
yond his control.

One of the baffling facts about the Cuban Revolution,
therefore, is this fact— that it is Fidel Castro's revolution,
and he is an emotional, incalculable force. One may be
sure they are as puzzled about him in Moscow and
Peiping as they are in Washington.

Several versions of what Nikita Khrushchev said to
John Kennedy about Fidel Castro at the Vienna meeting
in June, 1961, have been circulated. One highly reliable

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FIDEL CASTRO

source in Washington told The Times that the Russian
Premier said he had little use for Castro and considered
him "romantic and unreliable/' All accounts agreed that
Khrushchev clearly indicated he could not and did not
trust Fidel.

The best story I heard, because it seemed so apt, was
told to me by a Latin American statesman. Khrushchev is
supposed to have said to President Kennedy: "Fidel Cas-
tro is not a Communist, but you are going to make him
one."

Fidel's very instability, his emotionalism, his irrespon-
sibility, his volatile character— his defects, in short-
were our opportunities if we had known how to make
use of them, or had had the wisdom to do so. Each year
since 1957 there has been a different Fidel Castro to deal
with, yet each year— each day, in fact— he is treated as if
the ideas he holds then and the policies he is following
will not or cannot change.

One hears a great deal nowadays about the charismatic
leader, a term invented by the sociologist, Max Weber.
No doubt the term is abused and used too loosely, but I
have always felt that Fidel Castro is a perfect example
of the charismatic leader, one whose authority rests upon
a popular belief in qualities like heroism, sanctity, self-
sacrifice, even in superhuman, miraculous powers. He is
the object of hero worship and, in turn, he demands blind
obedience of all. There is a primitive, irrational quality
in charisma.

For Theodore Draper, who has written acutely but not
always understandingly of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel

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Castro is one of "the greatest pseudo-Messiahs of the
century." Yet it was on this basis of his charisma that
Fidel Castro got absolute power in Cuba. Of course, he
has been losing worshipers with the passage of time, as
he knew he would (he told me and my wife that as early
as March, 1959 ) and he has acquired other, more material
and effective instruments of power, but he was born with
the qualities that have made him one who has had a
greater effect on the Western Hemisphere than any other
single figure in Latin American history.

Obviously, he has an extraordinary magnetism. When
he went to Caracas, Venezuela, a few weeks after his
triumph, the tremendous popular emotions aroused fright-
ened the Venezuelan Government.

I remember saying to him back in February, 1959, a
month after he came to power, that men with this re-
markable gift can do a lot of good, like Gandhi, or a lot
of harm, like Hitler.

"How can such a gift, as you call it," he said wonder-
ingly, *T>e dangerous in the hands of one who lives only
for the people, who has no strength except in popular
support?"

This conviction of the righteousness of everything he
does is basic to his character. He is always certain that he
is doing good, that he is morally, as well as practically,
right In the case of the attempted exchange of tractors
for Cuban prisoners in June, 1961, there was not the
slightest understanding on his part of our sense of moral
shock As Jaime Benitez of the University of Puerto Rico

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FIDEL CASTRO

puts it, "moral Coventry does not much affect those who
do not see morality in the same terms."

Fidel, as I remarked before, fits the description a con-
temporary Frenchman gave of Robespierre: "You may
laugh at him now, but that man will go far; he believes
every word he says."

But let no one underestimate the true and fine char-
acteristics that go with the weak ones. Fidel's idealism is
genuine. So is his passionate desire to do what is best for
Cuba and the Cuban people. If he fails it will not be
because he is an evil man, as Hitler was, or because he is
a Communist playing a double game; it will be because
of mistakes, misjudgments, amateurishness, emotional-
ism, fanaticism.

Those of us who were in touch with him and were
watching him from the beginning had to ask ourselves if
Lord Acton's famous dictum—that all power tends to
corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely— would
apply to Fidel.

Alas, it has! Acton, of course, was not thinking of
material corruption. For anyone who knows Fidel Castro
that is unthinkable. Acton meant a spiritual corruption.

The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesar's Laurel Crown.

as William Blake wrote.

One sees it in the case of Fidel in the way he became
more and more autocratic. He was power hungry, and
the appetite grew by what it fed on. All his life he had
to be Number One— the captain of his basketball team

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THE CUBAN STORY

at school or the Jefe Maximo (the Chief Leader) of Cuba.

He takes no advice. He brooks no opposition. Anyone
who gets in his way is broken with complete rathlessness.
He is too dedicated and fanatical a revolutionary to feel
gratitude or loyalty to people whose loyalty to him
weakens, whatever they did for him in the past.

Two spectacular examples of this occurred in 1959 with
the brutal elimination of the man whom Fidel, himself,
had chosen for President, Judge Manuel Urrutia Leo, and
the imprisonment of Major Huber Matos, Commander
of the Camaguey garrison, who had been one of Fidel's
most trusted guerrilla leaders during most of the Sierra
Maestra period.

Urrutia had shown what was considered to have been
incompetence and a lack of sympathy for the revolution.
He was also too openly anti-Communist to suit the
Premier. Fidel's move was positively Machiavellian. On
July 17 he suddenly resigned and that night made a
nation-wide television and radio speech accusing the
President of near treason. Urrutia, shocked and in tears,
resigned— an example of a child of the revolution being
devoured by its creator.

The case of Huber Matos was even more revealing, and
is considered by some students of the Cuban Revolution
as a watershed. In my own opinion it was a logical, al-
though reprehensible, development, and perhaps even
inevitable.

Matos, like many other officers and members of the
former civic resistance, had watched the growing strength
of communism in the Army with alarm. He tried to argue

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FIDEL CASTRO

the matter out with Fidel, but Fidel would not listen or
even see him. So, on October 19 Huber Matos presented
his resignation. The next day he was arrested, charged
with "treason," and in December was tried, convicted and
sentenced to thirty years in prison, with Fidel Castro him-
self as the bitterest accuser.

Put thus baldly, it was an utterly shocking business—
but a revolution is not a tea party, and a great deal hap-
pens in revolutions that is shocking. Matos had won over
many other officers in the Camaguey garrison to his point
of view. Had he had his way, the defections would have
been very serious. It was a dangerous moment for Fidel
and the Revolution, and he struck hard and definitively.
From that time on everyone was on notice that Castro
was not going to let anybody oppose him and the revolu-
tion he was making. In this respect, one might say that
the Huber Matos case did represent a watershed in the
Cuban Revolution.

At all periods since my Sierra Maestra interview with
Fidel Castro, I have been approached by Cubans at
critical and dramatic moments for my intervention, and
this was no exception. I was never in a position to inter-
vene and I never tried, but I always answer letters, and
to one Cuban who wrote me at the time I said that the
case "involves the very delicate and essentially subjective
problem of what is or is not treachery during a revolu-
tion."

By the logic of the Revolution, Huber Matos was a
traitor. Those who condemned the outrageous way he
was treated, had to condemn the Revolution.

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THE CUBAN STORY

There were many similiar cases the first year. Ex-
President Jos4 Figueres of Costa Rica had sent arms to
Castro in the Sierra Maestra (the first time by Huber
Matos, incidentally) and had in many ways given in-
valuable support to Fidel. Yet when he went to Havana
in April, 1959, Fidel Castro did not meet him, did not
receive him and, after "Pepe" Figueres had made a
speech arguing for friendly relations with the United
States and warning against communism, Fidel called him
"a bad friend of Cuba, a bad revolutionary.''

Governor Luis Munoz Marin of Puerto Rico was an-
other valuable and influential friend of the young rebels
who has been treated in a most outrageous way by Fidel
Castro. He and his Government are under daily attacks of
the worst sort— a "stooge" of the United States, a "tyrant"
Cuban policies are to back the infinitesimal Puerto Rican
independence movement in the most vociferous way.

President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela was still
another case in point. All these men are too wise, too ex-
perienced and too generous not to understand the reasons
behind Castro's insults. From the beginning he attacked
all friends of the United States, democratic or dictatorial,
in the hemisphere, and soon he was attacking every single
government, since all of them naturally feared Castro
revolutions in their countries and were anti-Fidelista.

There was always method in Fidel Castro's madness, as
everyone who knew him would have realized. One of
Fidel's early ephemeral supporters in the United States
was Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of New York.
Powell evidently thought at first that he could get some-

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FIDEL CASTRO

thing out of the Revolution, but he was quickly disabused.

"Fidel has just gone to hell/* he told a friend on return-
ing to Washington from Havana in March, 1959. "He is on
benzedrine, still keeps on his twenty-one and twenty-two
hour days, but the problem is to find him! He disappears
completely for two days at a time. He has taken up with
a very pretty widow; spends a lot of time with her.

"I'm scared of Castro. He's like a madman. His old
friend Rufo Lopez Fresquet [Minister of the Treasury]
cried while listening to that crazy speech ordering those
aviators retried, 'He's been destroyed/ Lopez Fresquet
kept saying, over and over."

That "crazy speech" was one of the first evidences that
Fidel Castro had no conception of what was normally
considered justice, and also that he was utterly ruthless.
Forty-three airmen from the Batista Air Force had been
acquitted by a military court in Santiago de Cuba at the
beginning of March. Fidel called the acquittal "a grave
error/' and ordered the men retried by a new tribunal
with the clear understanding that the airmen were to be
sentenced to prison— as they were.

If Fidel had taken up with "a very pretty widow" at the
period, as is quite possible, that would not have lasted
any length of time. Fidel Castro has no intimate friends.
He loves women, not any one woman.

He was married on October 12, 1948, to a pretty young
girl from Oriente Province, Mirtha Diaz Balart, sister of a
college mate of Fidel's, Rafael Lincoln Diaz Balart Both
the brother and the father, Rafael, Sr., were Batistianos.

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THE CUBAN STORY

They opposed die marriage. A son, Fidelito, was born on
September 1, 1949.

Fidel, it need hardly be said, was not much of a hus-
band. Mirtha divorced him while he was a prisoner in the
Isle of Pines in 1955, and married Emilio Nunez Blanco,
son of Dr. Emilio Nunez Portuondo, Chief of the Cuban
delegation to the United Nations. In December, 1956,
Fidelito, then living with two sisters of Fidel in Mexico
City, was seized by Cuban agents, acting under direct
orders from President Batista, and spirited away to his
mother in Cuba. He later spent a year at a school in
Queens, New York. After Batista fled, Fidelito shared his
father's triumph, but Fidel has let him grow up quietly
out of the public eye.

The one woman who has really meant a great deal in
Fidel's life is the faithful Celia Sdnchez, and it would be
difficult to say just what she does mean. Celia is the
daughter of a physician of Pil6n, near Manzanillo in
Oriente Province at the foot of the Sierra Maestra. She
was in the 26th of July Movement when Castro and the
eighty-one men landed in the Granma on December 2.
In fact, Celia had been waiting for Fidel up in the moun-
tains since November 29— and she has been by his side
ever since.

It is true that he sleeps in four or five different places
in Havana, partly for safety's sake, but most nights he is in
Celia's apartment. She is a brave, simple, gentle, pious
creature— even though she fought courageously in some
skirmishes in the Sierra. Celia is a bit older than Fidel,
very feminine but not sexy, with a fine, delicate, appeal-

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FIDEL CASTRO

ing but not beautiful face. She is devoted to Fidel, utterly
loyal, and watching them together one gets the impression
that her feelings are more maternal than anything else,
but this is her secret and Fidel's.

In the United States, and by embittered Cuban exiles,
Celia Sanchez is labeled as a Communist. To anyone
knowing her this seems utterly absurd; there never was a
creature less political or less interested in politics than
Celia Sanchez.

So far as she was concerned, Fidel could do no wrong.
Devotion and loyalty were qualities that Fidel Castro
has not only craved, but demanded. With him, it is all or
nothing, for or against. There is no compromise, no middle
ground.

He often acts like a man with a sentence of death
against him—assassination. It would have been easy to
assassinate him, presuming the one who did it was pre-
pared to die. However, his Cuban opponents— and evi-
dently the American Central Intelligence Agency— always
realized that matters would be worse, in Cuba and so far
as the United States was concerned, if Fidel were killed.
As Dr. Benitez put it: "There are times when a live
demagogue is infinitely preferable to a dead martyr.''

The image of Fidel would be more potent throughout
Latin America dead than alive. This is aside from the
fact that he, alone, holds the fabric of Cuban society to-
gether and without him it would break down into chaos,
anarchy and a blood bath fearful to contemplate.

The American image of Fidel Castro, incidentally, has
no relation to the Cuban or Latin American one, Ours was

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created at the time of the executions of the "war crim-
inals," which began in mid-January, 1959. Since then,
Fidel has been a brutal, bearded monster to Americans,
with an early addition of the greatest of all political sins
to Americans— the Communist taint. Once a public image
is created, it becomes indestructible— good or bad. The
good image of Dwight D. Eisenhower has never been
diminished in the United States, although many of us
feel he turned out to be a poor President. An image of
that type becomes a myth. The potency of such a myth
was pointed out brilliantly early in the century by the
Frenchman, Georges Sorel. It operates in Fidel Castro's
favor within Cuba and against him in the United States,
but they are two different myths, two images.

The reality might resemble neither picture. Fidel, for
instance, works at demoniac speed. One would think
from what one reads about him in the United States that
he spends most of his time fighting guerrillas, preparing
for—and repelling— invasions, raving against the United
States on television or before mass meetings. Actually, he
works eighteen or twenty hours a day at miming his
revolution, and most of aU with the agrarian reform.

It is true that he does seem to be burning himself up.
One continually wonders whether any human being can
live long at such a fever heat, well or ill, working so hard,
sleeping so little, consumed with emotions, burning the
candle at both ends with a fierce flame.

Such men cannot change or be changed. Professor C.
Wright Mills of Columbia University used a clever phrase
in describing Fidel's personality— "he does not know

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FIDEL CASTRO

limits/* It has also been said of him, and with a good
deal of truth, that he does not count the cost of his
actions.

The well-known joke has for a long time been applied
to Fidel about St. Peter hastily summoning a psychiatrist
up to Heaven where God is pacing up and down mutter-
ing: "We've got to throw the Old Testament out of the
Bible. We must change the Ten Commandments. Those
Psalms have to be rewritten/'—^You see/7 St. Peter says
to the psychiatrist, "He thinks He is Fidel Castro/'

Theodore Draper, in an impressive article for the Eng-
lish magazine, Encounter, reprinted in June, 1961, by the
American weekly, the New Leader, draws a picture of an
almost humble, self-reproachful Fidel Castro. It is drawn
largely from an interview Fidel gave to the correspondent
of the Italian Communist newspaper, UUnita, in Febru-
ary, 1961. In it Fidel confesses to a sense of ideological
inferiority with regard to the Communists. However, the
uneasy and intelligent Draper adds: "I cannot suppress
the feeling that the new, self -critical Fidel is totally out
of character/'

Indeed he is! If there is anything inconceivable about
Fidel, it is a genuine sense of humility. That he never
possessed and never will.

The average or normal or ordinary person, and also
older, experienced men, figure out what they would do
in a given situation or what ought to be done, and then
expect Fidel Castro to do it. But characters like Fidel are
not normal and do not think along customary lines or act
as other people do. Fidel's actions are unpredictable,

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THE CUBAN STORY

especially as he does not confide completely in anybody.
His motives are not always clear.

He is impetuous and, as I said, highly emotional, the
reverse of a cold and calculating thinker. In this, in-
cidentally, he is muy espanol—very Spanish. He relies on
intuition, instinct, flare, guided— if at all— by a very con-
siderable intelligence. It is extraordinary that his intelli-
gence should be so underrated in the United States, as if
any man could have accomplished what he accomplished
and be transforming the whole Western Hemisphere and
still be unintelligent.

He has genius, of course. As the French would say, he
is an original. There is nothing of Hamlet in his character.
And there is no use trying to outguess him, as he probably
does not know himself what he is going to do next. He
has been called a deceiver, a liar, a traitor to his own
revolution by opponents who quote what he said at one
time, and point to the fact that he is doing the opposite.

The most effective expression of the TDetrayaT thesis,
as a matter of fact, came in the United States White Paper
of early April, 1961, in which the theoretical American
groundwork for the coming invasion was laid.

The charge made is that "the leaders of the revolu-
tionary regime betrayed their own revolution, delivered
that revolution into the hands of powers alien to the
hemisphere. . . .*

The key passage of the White Paper reads as follows:

The positive programs initiated in the first months of the
Castro regime— the schools built, the medical clinics estab-
lished, the new housing, the early projects of land reform, the

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FIDEL CASTRO

opening up of beaches and resorts to the people, the elimina-
tion of graft in government— were impressive in their concep-
tion; no future Cuban government can expect to turn its back
on such objectives. But so far as the expressed political aims
of the revolution were concerned, the record of the Castro
regime has been a record of the steady and consistent betrayal
of Dr. Castro's pre-revolutionary promises; and the result has
been to corrupt the social achievements and make them the
means, not of liberation, but of bondage.

Presumably, one must put aside for the purposes of this
argument the fact that an overwhelming majority— per-
haps as much as 75 or 80 per cent of the Cuban people-
support Castro and his revolution, and hence do not think
that they have been betrayed. For the rest, I would say
that the changes in Fidel's policies are better explained
by two facts— the first, that he thought he could do cer-
tain things and then found that they were not possible,
or were contradictory to other aims, and the second, that
he had no concept of the true meaning of freedom and
democracy and was never to have one.

I confess that, like so many Cubans, I did not at first
realize that Fidel had this complete Mind spot in his
mentality. He still does not realize it himself. It took a
gradual unfolding of Cuban developments to make it
clear that so long as Fidel Castro remains in power there
will not and cannot be democracy and freedom in Cuba.

I am convinced that he really thought, while he was
in the Sierra Maestra, that he could have democracy, a
free press, elections, private enterprise and the like, and
still have a radical social revolution that would free Cuba

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THE CUBAN STORY

of American economic domination. He found that he
could have democracy or revolution, but not both. He
found that he could not be independent of the United
States without becoming dependent on the Soviet bloc.

Like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, he conjured up forces
beyond his control. I am sure that he feels he has been
true to the basic ideals he always had for a social revolu-
tion, and that his deviations were responses he had to
make to men and circumstances seeking to thwart him, or
beyond his control.

A leading Cuban banker who worked with the revolu-
tion in 1959 said it was like operating in a fourth dimen-
sion; it made sense, but only within a special revolutionary
system of logic.

Fidel Castro's dictatorship was never organized or in-
stitutionalized, like Generalissimo Franco's, in Spain, for
instance, unless his new united Socialist party provides
such institutionalization. It has been a straightforward ex-
ercise of personal power in behalf of the revolution. This
is different from the classic Latin American military
cauditto of the Batista, Peron, Somoza, Trujillo, Perez
Jimenez type. They were dictators for themselves and for
a small clique of the traditional ruling classes, all of whom
enriched themselves by corrupt practices or who sup-
ported the dictatorship in the name of law, order, stability
and anticommunism. Those dictators worked to hold
things down. They were conservatives and Right-wingers.
Fidel Castro is Leftist, radical, dynamic.

I said of him a long time ago— you don't take him or
leave him. Being where he is, with the power he has and

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FIDEL CASTRO

will have as long as lie lives, and his character being what
it is, you take him. We are going to have to live with Fidel
Castro and all he stands for while he is alive, and with his
ghost when he is dead.

If there is one thing I have been harping upon inces-
santly for more than two and a half years now, it is the
warning that this is a very formidable young man, that
he cannot be intimidated, not even by the United States,
or, if it comes to that, by Russia, and that he will not back
down or surrender. On the contrary, he has had a firm
conviction that the only hope for Cuba was to hit back
twice as hard for every blow he received.

And he is tough— very tough. He showed that right
at the beginning when he executed some 550 Batistiano
"war criminals'" in the face of loud American protests.
These protests were well intentioned and based on a
proper Anglo-Saxon conception of the right of all accused
to a fair trial, whatever the circumstances; they were
wrong in their complete failure to understand why Fidel
Castro carried out the executions and how virtually all
Cubans at that time approved of what he did.

The American press is to be blamed for this failure to
understand and explain— but of that, more in another
chapter.

The executions began in mid- January and ended May
15, 1959, when Castro ordered revolutionary war-crimes
trials ended. American Congressmen and American news
commentators went on writing as if the executions never
stopped. The fact is that in almost a year and a half there-
after only five Cubans were executed.

THE CUBAN STORY

Executions were resumed for "counter-revolutionary"
crimes, but it is doubtful that as many as 100 more were
shot by the summer of 1961. By revolutionary standards,
this has not been a sanguinary affair. When the Reign of
Terror ended in France on July 28, 1794, there had been
2,600 victims in Paris alone. In the street rioting in
Caracas, Venezuela, that followed the overthrow of the
dictator, General Perez Jimenez, in January, 1958, some
2,000 were believed to have lost their lives at the hands
of wild mobs. There were no bloodthirsty mobs in Cuba,
thanks to Fidel Castro. Batista not only killed his thou-
sands in the two years of the Castro insurrection, but tor-
ture was commonly used. In Castro's revolution, there has
been police brutality, very bad prison conditions, a species
of police terror, delation—all inexcusable— but there has
been no torture.

These facts are not given to excuse Fidel Castro, but to
throw light on his character, to give some idea of its
complexity and of that quality within him which "does
not know limits/* This man is a born fighter. His courage is
boundless; it has a mad, rash quality. He has done things
to us Americans and said things that would have seemed
incredible if one did not know that he is capable of any-
thing. He certainly has done many things simply to shock
and defy us.

There are lots of other characteristics that could be
noted. He is a poor administrator and a worse economist.
He is politically astute, but the world's worst statesman;
a demagogue, but with a genuine, paternalistic love of

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FIDEL CASTRO

people. Yet I do not believe for one moment that he trusts
people, not even his beloved guajifos—the peasants.

His use of television (so frighteningly reminiscent of
George Orwell's "Big Brother") is effective because of his
magnetic personality and because he is a naturally gifted
orator of the first order. After a trip to Cuba in June, 1959,
when Fidel's oratory was at its highest and longest, I
coined the phrase: "government by television/*

The length of his speeches—running as long as five or
six hours in the early months and still taking a normal
two or three hours— aroused amusement and ridicule in
the United States. It so happened that Cubans listened to
Fidel from beginning to end, and anyone taking the
trouble to read the text of his speeches would find that
they are effective, clearly reasoned, interesting and well
organized. Obviously, he always knows in a general way
what points he wants to make and how he is going to
make them. Then he cuts loose with his natural oratorical
gifts, his fervor and passion, his vivid gestures and all the
paraphernalia of his extraordinary personality.

He has a unique oratorical style, so much so that any-
one reading a passage taken at random from any of his
speeches would know that the speaker was Fidel Castro.

Here is the briefest example, taken from his speech to
the tremendous mass rally on labor day, May 1, 1961, a
few weeks after the invasion had failed. Allowances, of
course, have to be made for the translation; Fidel's florid
style better suits a Latin language than English.

Besides, given certain circumstances, it is impossible to crush
a revolution. . . . The blood that was spilled there was the

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blood of workmen and peasants; the blood that was spilled
there was the blood of humble sons of the people, not the
blood of big landowners, not the blood of millionaires, not the
blood of gamblers, not the blood of thieves, not the blood of
criminals, not the blood of exploiters. . . .

It was blood spilled in defense of an ideal. . . . Not the ideal
of the mercenary who sells his soul for gold to an imperial
power, but the ideal of the worker who does not want to go on
being exploited, the ideal of the peasant who does not want
once more to lose his land, the ideal of the youth who does
not want once more to lose his teacher, the ideal of the Negro
who does not want once more to face discrimination, . . .

and so forth and so on for an interminable sentence of
hundreds of words that is still balanced, hypnotic in its
repetitive rhythm, and rounded out with fine phrases:
"because the Revolution is his Hfe, because he has iden-
tified his life with it and his future and his hope.*7

Part of the reason for this incessant oratory was the
necessity of keeping the enthusiasm of the Cuban people
at fever pitch. This is partly the reason for the virulent
anti-Yankeeism. In some ways one of the most important
and one of the features of the revolution least understood
in the United States centers around the character of the
Cuban people.

There are few things in the world more difficult to make
than a social revolution. And of all the places to make one,
I would say that Cuba is the most difficult. In speaking
to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April,
1960, I said: "The Cuban people have many wonderful
qualities; they are a superb race, but they are very in-
dividualistic. They are a violent people, as their history

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FIDEL CASTRO

shows. They have a curious and terrible history of spies,
informers and traitors who may be one in millions, but if
you follow their long and brave struggle against the
Spaniards, you will see it dotted with the treachery of
individuals. . . . They are a fanatical people, politically
speaking. They never stick with any party or any man.
They are always against the government that is in power,
whatever government it is."

There are many other characteristics, good and bad,
that could be added— pride, sensitivity, passion, courage,
cynicism, intelligence, lack of restraint, lack of discipline,
warmth, volatility.

I could go on for a long time, but for those who know
the Spanish race, I will end with a reminder that the
Cubans are Spanish- Americans. A wonderful people, but
not the type to sustain a social revolution.

Fidel Castro knew this. He knows his people and he
knew he was going to have to make his revolution against
fierce and growing opposition. This explains many of his
actions.

The older I have got in this game of watching and
recording history, the more clearly I see how much de-
rives from the human factors, how little one can trust to
appearances, to surfaces, to patterns, even to logic. With-
out the human factors there is no understanding of the
Cuban Revolution.

Take the simple fact that this is a revolt of youth, not
the "youth" of the forties which we are now talking about
in the United States, but youths in their twenties and early
thirties. Some of us older folk have all along toyed with

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THE CUBAN STOEY

the idea that this is mainly what is wrong with the Cuban
Revolution. Youth is idealistic, Utopian, radical, and, in
Latin America, extremely nationalistic. It is also inevitably
amateurish and inexperienced. Youth sows its wild oats,
does rash things, cares little for wealth and property, is
impatient, impetuous, callous of the suffering of the older
generation.

It is well to keep youth in mind whenever one thinks
about Latin America. The population in that area is grow-
ing at the fastest rate in the world. Forty per cent of
Latin Americans are under fifteen years of age. The
median age in the United States is about 29.5 years; the
average age of the Latin American is 21.5 years. The
youth axe moving in to take over, and the first of his
generation to do so is Fidel Castro. I do not deny that this
is a frightening thought.

Che Guevara, in his manual for guerrilla fighters, La
Guerra de Guerrillas, holds that Danton's slogan is the
right one for a revolution: "De Taudace, de faudace,
toujours de Taudace?

These are the enfants terrible of the Western world.
The small group who originally got up into the Sierra
Maestra, and those who gathered around Fidel Castro at
the beginning, were all fanatical, dedicated, intelligent
and loyal young men and women. Not a one of them has
defected, although a few quit the Government, and they
are today the leaders of the revolution.

The excesses one sees are in part explicable by the
rashness and inexperience of youth and in part by the
fact that the manner of coming to power after the long,

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FIDEL CASTRO

lone guerrilla struggle In the mountains went to their
heads. Nothing seemed impossible. They are now, for
instance, confidently embarked on a conflict in which
they expect to defeat the United States. This is what
might be called the David and Goliath complex.

We would be naive and shortsighted not to recognize
that these young men and women in Cuba have high
ideals, however mistaken we may think they are in trying
to achieve them. The young men and women being re-
cruited for work and government jobs in Cuba are gen-
erally inexperienced, but they are enthusiastic, honest,
patriotic and hard-working. Many are now Communists
and these have their special objectives, but they also want
the revolution to succeed. They are chosen first for the
quality of loyalty.

These young Cubans share a distrust and even contempt
for what free enterprise and elections meant to the Cuban
people. They have a profound scepticism of existing in-
terests, a suspiciousness of advice from interested quar-
ters, an approach that is more theoretical than practical,
a disdain for orthodoxy, an indifference to individual
suffering or injustice if it is done for what they consider
the good of Cuba. The original group was puritanical to
such a degree that it set out in the beginning to abolish
gambling, narcotics and prostitution— in vain, for the most
part.

Fidel Castro was so old-fashioned when he first reached
Havana he argued that interest on money was a sin. In
many respects, these young Cubans started with ideas
that belonged in the pre-Marxist, pre-scientific ages of

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Socialism. The acceptance of Marxist Socialism was a de-
velopment that came with their practical experience of
government.

In order to complete the record, I should, perhaps,
repeat here that in my opinion Fidel Castro never was
and is not now a Communist. Let us dismiss this aspect
by quoting the Deputy Director of the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency, General C. P. Cabell, who testified
to the Senate Internal Security Committee on November
5, 1959, that his organization believed that Castro was not
a member of the Communist party, and did not consider
himself to be a Communist.

The young not only dream of Utopias; they believe in
them, so these young men set out to make Jerusalem in
Cuba's "green and pleasant land." Never in the history of
the Western Hemisphere have young men held such
power and so gloried in it. They are having a wonderful
time creating a brave, new world, but creation, like birth,
is painful and messy.

Even now, in this fall of 1961, Fidel Castro is only
thirty-five years old. John Kennedy is ancient by com-
parison. We who watch Fidel and his companions would
do well to ponder that these young men and women
could be riding the wave of the future in Latin America.
Think, when you see Fidel Castro in the newsreels, and
hear his hoarse, impassioned voice, that you may be
seeing and hearing a prophet. Should we say a prophet
of doom?

I spent the whole day of his thirty-fourth birthday with
him, August 13, 1960. He was then recovering from an

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FIDEL CASTRO

illness that led to the wildest sort o£ speculation by
American correspondents and the American press. Had
they been in contact with him or with his close associates
they would have known that all he had was virus pneu-
monia, followed by a typically nasty reaction to the anti-
biotics pumped into him.

The morning after his birthday 1 wrote out for myself
an account of the day we spent together which, I believe,
will give an idea of what sort of a person Fidel Castro is,
I am reproducing these notes here exactly as written; not
a word has been changed or taken out.

Stepping out of the elevator a little past midnight at the
Banco Nacional I walked into him, literally, as he was stand-
ing right in front with his back turned. He was cordial but
disconcerted, he said, to meet me so casually when he had
wanted to come and see me at the Hotel Nacional. After
chatting a little, he said he had to go home because the
doctors insisted he must have seven or eight hours sleep but
we made an appointment for the coming day. "I don't like
just to sit and talk. We will go out into the country toward
Pinar del Rio. I'm more interested in dhickens> sugar and
agrarian reform than in the OAS."

"Major Fajardo, his Negro military aide who has taken the
place of Yanes (they said that Yanes, aside from being for-
givably a terrific ladies man had been using INRA money for
his private purse— Fidel forgives a lot in his associates, said
Nunez Jimenez who told me this, but not dishonesty), came
for me a little before ten and took me to Celia Sanchez's
apartment, 1007 llth in Vedado, a shabby little apartment
house with the usual sloppy rebel soldiers on guard at the
entrance, up one narrow flight. The apartment was furnished
from their house at Pilon, Celia's blonde, younger sister who

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THE CUBAN STORY

does not remotely look like her, told me. Celia came in, dressed
in a flossy, floor-length., light-blue organdy gown with blue
ribbons at the waist and neck. The room was uncomfortable,
untidy, without the slightest taste, with chromos on the walls,
It must look like thousands of middle-class, middle-income
homes in Cuba. This is where Fidel sleeps most of the time
when he is in Havana.

While waiting briefly for Fidel we talked about the Sierra.
She said she had gone up on Nov. 29th, [1956] the day before
Fidel was supposed to land, and waited for him. She knows
and remembers everyone who had been there and promised
to make me a list and give me her recollections, I discovered
from her the important fact that she kept every single docu-
ment of the whole two years in the Sierra— his orders, even
to patrols, his proclamations, declarations, texts of his Radio
Rebelde talks, the letters he received, the messages, the nego-
tiations with the civic resistance—everything. They are care-
fully sorted and wrapped in nylon and are at Cojimar. As
historic archives of the Revolution they are obviously invalu-
able.

Fidel looked rested but his nervousness or restlessness was
shown when he made a few phone calls and paced up and
down the short length of the cord incessantly while he talked
instead of sitting or standing still. The informality of his life
again struck me.

We drove off very soon and the first thing he did again was
to apologize to me for the way we had met, which he clearly
thought was disrespectful and must have looked as if he had
been trying to avoid me, whereas he assured me he had told
everybody how much he wanted to see me.

It was obvious from the whole day's experience that his
heart and soul— and the heart of the Revolution— is unques-
tionably in the Agrarian Reform. The day was, in fact, a
process of seeing the reform in operation with discussions
and arguments in the car and at the end, in Pinar del Rio, on

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FIDEL CASTRO

every topic of importance— the U.S., the OAS, communism,
defections, economics, the Church.

I asked him what about this business of the cooperatives
paying in chits up to 80 per cent which I had read and heard
about often. He had been making a eulogy of cooperatives and
was to do so several times during the day. He is convinced
that the guajiros prefer it that way— it gives them security, a
community life (they are very sociable, he said), wages, profits,
incentives and is more efficient for productivity, especially in
commodities like sugar, cattle, chickens, dairies. Not tobacco
which requires special care and skill on small farms— he has
left the industry alone thus far but from what he said about
"problems" I suspect that something is going to be done. On
the question of chits he laughed and said that is typical
counter-revolutionary propaganda. "Why should we give chits
instead of money when there is nothing to be gained by doing
so?" He said he wanted to show me a tienda del pueblo of the
INRA which has now taken the place of all private grocery and
butcher stores and where goods are sold at obviously reason-
able prices. A little later on we came upon a little one and
dropped in. There Fidel, asking the manager about chits,
seemed a litde surprised and disconcerted when the manager
said, Yes, many people bring them here, and he took a batch
out of the cash register. As it happened, Fidel was right, al-
though it seemed curious that he had not acquainted himself
with the process. The chits were not payment for work, they
were loans by the cooperative concerned to workers in ad-
vance of wages, but since the wages are paid twice a month
and since the worker does not have to borrow if he need not,
the process is simply a convenience. Whatever is borrowed is
deducted from the next wage and no one is allowed to run
over, so that the old, bad system of lifelong indebtedness does
not apply,

Fidel earlier had made the point that everything about the
agrarian reform from the beginning had been done by him,

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under his orders and every payment, every check, every policy
is his. There was no reason to doubt this, although he did not
seem acquainted with every detail. The choice of a very
radical type of reform instead of the one made by Humberto
Sori Marin in the beginning was known to be Fidel's and was
typical, as we could see later, of the extreme radicalness of the
Revolution in every field.

While driving along in the first hour we came upon one of
those playasy or popular beaches, he had made for Habaneros
—sports fields, pool, beach for bathing, club house, restaurant,
soft-drink bar, rafts, row boats. It was crowded and when they
saw Fidel and word got around there was a pandemonium of
joy and enthusiasm. He was almost mobbed. Nothing could
have been more spontaneous and it was obvious that he is
still literally worshiped. An old Negress brought along a really
ancient crone who held out her hands to Fidel. "My mother/'
the first one said. "You are 34 today and she is 98." Children
galore were brought up to touch him or be patted on the head.
What he had wanted to show me most of all, and the main
reason for stopping there, was the menu, as he had been
arguing that they are providing things cheaply for the people.
It was true that the prices were very reasonable, especially
the table d'hote which provided meals from 70 cents to $1.
The enthusiasm of the greeting he received was typical of the
whole day, although at the farms and cooperatives, where
he is evidently a familiar sight, there was a very friendly
warmth and not the excitement caused when he stops some-
where unexpectedly.

In all we must have stopped at six or eight farms and co-
operatives and a number of places where construction is taking
place for farm houses, fertilizer manufacture, incubation,
artificial insemination and the like. Certainly, so far as the
Province of Pinar is concerned it is wrong to say that all the
agrarian reform has done is to take over existing properties
and make them cooperatives. Almost all the places I saw were

FIDEL CASTRO

either new creations or old latifundia in process of expansion
and improvement. Fidel and Nunez, who joined us at a poultry
farm at lunch and stayed with us, claimed that the same sort
of expansion and new work is going on around all the island
and that this was typical. If one could accept their statement,
there is no question that the reform is making progress and
will increase productivity although whether they are doing it
well or wisely or efficiently is another thing. Certainly critics
of the regime are convinced not, but after what I saw I must
retain doubts that they really know everything that is happen-
ing. The extent to which the agrarian reform is the real heart
of the Revolution was never impressed upon me so strongly as
yesterday. It gives a focus and meaning to the Revolution as a
Revolution that is so much more important than the political
side or even the international, except as these can destroy the
Revolution,

Many times during the day Fidel spoke to workers, asking
about their problems and farms, and he heard some complaints
—two especially were strong in their complaints, one who
argued heatedly while we were eating lunch that he couldn't
get the water he needed, another who said that his farm was
too small for a family of nine (Nunez said: "Why don't you
join a cooperative?"). On the whole the complaints were few
and contentment the rule.

We shared a lunch with the workers at a poultry farm-
broiled chicken, frijoles, rice and platanos fried, washed down
with warm Hatuey Malta— no drinks when one is with Fidel.
We sat on boxes at a board table surrounded by the men who
wanted to listen or argue, and swarming with flies— but every-
thing we ate was good and hot and plentiful. Fidel ate a large
plate of rice and frijoles and then a whole chicken—not a little
broiler either. This was between 1 and 2 and I was to see him
again tackle a hearty meal at 6:30 so there is certainly nothing
wrong with his appetite. Fajardo solicitously forced him to
take his medicine at both meals— estreptodiacnil and charcoal.

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THE CUBAN STORY

Fidel's energy has not flagged. We were in and out of the
car innumerable times, with him striding as always as if he
had 7-league boots and not a second to lose. The title of a day
like that could be: "Keeping up with Fidel." His enthusiasm at
seeing thousands of chicks or ducklings, innumerable pigs,
sows and piglets. He never tired of watching the sucklings at
their meals— "qw espectdculo pretioso!" His thrill at seeing a
good field of grain or sugar cane or tobacco was obviously real
and spontaneous, because he would continually interrupt what
he was saying as we drove along to exclaim. He is a real
countryman. He knew and asked about every breed of pig, or
chicken or cow, and identified every growing field instantly.
He would have made a good farmer.

His enthusiasm was more like someone 14 than 34. I was
more impressed than ever with the fact that this is a revolt of
youth. Driving back from the Campo de la Libertad airfield
in a jeep with Nunez, he [Nunez] argued in all seriousness
that nobody over 40 could really understand and work with
the Revolution. The exceptions, like Roa and Dortic6s (both
in their forties) simply proved the rule. The radicalism, the
demands that are made for discipline, faith, courage, loyalty,
comradeship are quite possibly beyond the capacities and
temperament of anyone who is not young, Fidel spoke with
anger and reproach of the defections. Raul Chibas had given
his word of honor as an officer, he said, that he would not try
to go away and he had received every assurance of safety. Miro
Cardona had been friendly with them all right up to the end
and not given an inkling of his intention to defect or even
argued about policies. Felipe Pazos he discussed simply as
one who could not understand or sympathize with the Revolu-
tion, but Fidel was bitter at the idea that he was working
against the Revolution.

The interesting thing in all this was that Fidel is convinced
that in every case these men were persuaded to defect by the
United States Embassy. He feels absolutely sure about that,

FIDEL CASTRO

and it is part of his conviction that the U.S. was out to over-
throw him from the beginning. His feeling applies to many
other defectors, as he feels the Embassy has been plotting
constantly in every way it can against him.

"You ought to have heard the conversations with Am-
bassador Bonsai from the beginning/' he said. "He lectured
me, criticized us and our Revolution, complained, threatened.
There was never the slightest understanding of the Revolution
or sympathy with what we were trying to do. I can assure you
I felt humiliated as a Cuban at the way I, the Prime Minister
of Cuba, was being talked to. This was not the attitude of
two equal and friendly nations of the OAS. This was an effort
at dictation, direction and complaint. You ought, also, to hear
how the Soviet representatives talk. They are friendly, respect-
ful, sympathetic, understanding. They are not ordering us
about, not making demands. They make us feel like a sovereign
country. The United States Ambassador tries to make us feel
as if we must do what the United States wants.

(Remember Roa telling me at lunch about the delivery of
the notes of protest on the oil refinery seizures— the British
Ambassador, so human and friendly, Bonsai "restraining his
fury," grim-looking, stern, delivering his note with hardly a
word and stomping out. )

(All this, with other things I heard, makes one wonder
whether they are planning to break relations with the U.S.
on the theory that they would be better off without an Em-
bassy staff here since they are really convinced that the staff
is plotting as hard as it can against them. Fidel, like Luis
Buch [the President's Secretary] and others, feels strongly
about the two FBI men they expelled. "Those photos that
Friedemann had," he said, "from Goering and others were not
souvenirs. They were inscribed to Friedemann and pre-dated
the war.")

He went into a long harangue about how respectful the
Revolution had been of all Church rights, how he had inter-

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THE CUBAN STORY

vened in favor of the Church in cases like Villanueva Univer-
sity, how he had done everything he could to accommodate
the Church. Then he asserted, like all of them, that the Church
in Cuba had always been on the side, first of the Spaniards,
then of the Cuban ruling classes, and that the people of Cuba
never liked or respected their Church. "We are a religious
people, but not a clerical one; Cubans, in fact, are anti-
clerical." Here, too, he felt certain that the United States had
intervened and that the Church was influenced by the Amer-
icans. They had provoked the demonstrations in front of the
Churches. "No revolution could have been so patient, so con-
siderate. We know what a bad effect a conflict with the Church
will have on our international position and this is why the
United States took their part. However, we have no doubts that
the Cuban people are on our side and the Church cannot turn
them against us." Like the others, he pointed out that a large
majority of the clergy are Spanish, which in his eyes linked
them to Franco and to the United States policy in favor of
Franco. Of course, he said, there are many Cuban priests who
understand the Revolution, and have been helpful. "If it is
necessary to engage in a conflict with the Church we will do so,
but I hope we do not have to. Nothing will be allowed to stop
our Revolution."

Three or four of the farms we saw were for pigs> which
indicates that they are going in for them in a big way. Fidel
constantly referred to the fact that the best breeds, the best
machinery, etc., come from the U.S. and that is where he wants
to buy them and is buying them. "I'm going to get you the
best breeding bulls there are," he told one farmer. When I
asked where, perhaps Argentina, he said, No, there was hoof
and mouth disease there; he would get them either in the
U.S. or Canada. As I saw, there was much interest in incuba-
tion and artificial insemination. Fidel said that in the pre-
revolutionary days Cuban agriculture was antiquated— al-
though not in fields like sugar and the big cattle ranches.

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FIDEL CASTRO

About six o'clock we ended up at a house on the old garrison
grounds of Pinar del Rio. This was obviously where he had
gone when he was moved from Havana during his convales-
cence. We sat around talking and drinking Coca Cola. Fidel
had smoked incessantly all day— cigarettes when he was not
smoking cigars. Fajardo told him he had to take a rest, as the
doctor ordered. Fidel complained. "Look, Matthews is older
than I and he doesn't need to rest." The others pointed out
that I had not been ill a week ago and Fidel had. They sat
down to another copious meal which I did not join, having an
appointment at eight for dinner in town.

Fidel was reminiscing during and before the meal about the
Sierra and especially my trip up there. To meet me they had
descended to the foothills and really put themselves in Batista
territory where they knew patrols were working all the time.
It was an even more dangerous business than I realized at the
time, although I naturally was suspicious from the fact that we
at all times had to talk in whispers. This was the first get-
together in the Sierra of the 26th of July group and hence was
more historic than I realized. After talking to me they quickly
moved back up to the high Sierra and narrowly escaped am-
bushes and clashes. Fidel has promised to write out or dictate
his part in the incident.

Nunez was going back in his INRA helicopter and offered
to take me— an hour and a half instead of three hours in a ear-
so we left at seven. Fidel, typically, said there was so much
more he wanted to talk about and so many other things he
wanted to show me, especially the "pueblos/' I had seen a
number of the new little towns being put up to go with the
cooperatives— houses, church, school, clinic, shops etc.— but
none in the region we went through had been completed. He
wanted to show me some finished ones. I said, the next time,
when Nancie is with me.

It was a friendly day. What does one know of this Revolu-
tion who does not know Fidel?

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THE CUBAN STORY

"It was/* as I wrote, "a friendly day/" and neither I
nor my wife has ever lost a sense of friendliness. I doubt
we ever will, whatever he does and however critical we
get. In ending the first of my three lectures on the Cuban
Revolution at City College o£ New York in March, 1961,
I said:

"I would not have anything I say here, or that I will say,
interpreted as support of the Cuban Revolution in its
present form.

"Yet, there is much that is good as well as much that
is bad. Al I do say to you of this Cuban Revolution is—
open your eyes, open your minds, open your hearts. You
need them all to understand the Cuban Revolution. If you
understand, you will condemn and you will condone.
You will accuse and you will sympathize. You will see that
there is much that is evil and much that is good.

"And if you see all that, you can criticize as much as
you want; you would be compelled to criticize. But if
you understand, you will feel that for all its errors, its
injustices and its cruelties, there is something idealistic
in this Cuban Revolution which should be preserved.

"Those here in the United States who are trying to kill
it, would destroy a lot of idealism, a lot of hope, a lot of
life. The death of the Revolution as an ideal would leave
a desolate Cuba, haunted by the ghosts of an ignoble,
wicked past.

"But it would also be haunted by the ghosts of Fidel
Castro and the young men who were with him, who
destroyed this sinful past, who tried to build something
better.

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FIDEL CASTRO

"I do not think, myself, that this Revolution can or
will die. It has the vigor of a creeping vine—or you might
think, of noxious weeds—but it has vigor."

From very early in the game, it had been my contention
that the Cuban Revolution was shaking the Western
Hemisphere the way the French Revolution shook Europe.
In an editorial I did for The Times, printed on June 21,
1960, we said:

"What is happening in Cuba and because of Cuba is,
without question, the most important, dynamic and fate-
ful development in Latin America since the Wars of
Independence 150 years ago."

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CHAPTER FIVE

The Hemisphere

SOMETHING NEW, EXCITING, dangerous and infectious has
come into the Western Hemisphere with the Cuban
Revolution. Latin America has had hundreds of political
and military revolutions in the last century and a half,
and it has had two isolated social revolutions in Mexico
and Bolivia, but it has never had anything like this.

"Fidelismo challenges the structure of the established
Latin American universe," Professor K. H. Silvert, one of
our leading Latin Americanists wrote in a paper for the
American Universities Field Staff on January 29, 1961,
"its distribution of economic, social and political power,
its accommodation with the Church, its set of relation-
ships between the person and the world— in short, its total
self -conception/*

A drastic social revolution, the massive pressures every-
where in Latin America for social justice, the cold war,
and an extraordinary young man have given the Cuban

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Revolution an importance unequaled by any event in the
Western Hemisphere since the Wars of Independence, A
new era began on January 1, 1959, when the Cuban in-
surrection triumphed. The excitement has been world-
wide. Americans would be astonished, if they could see
the interest in, and the sympathy for, the Cuban Revolu-
tion in Europe and the Middle East.

History never operates in a vacuum. It is often likened
to the flowing of a river. At some time, the modern con-
cept that a man has a right to a decent life whatever his
color, wherever and to whomever he was born, was bound
to approach the point of overflowing in Latin America.
When that point was reached it only needed an upheaval
and the man, to make it come to the flood.

This is what Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution
have done, and if I may belabor the analogy, let me
point out that rivers do not flow backward. The flood will
subside, but we will al be sailing in a different place and
toward an unknown shore.

There are so many more elements at hand now to make
Latin American revolutions! They used to be done by
handfuls of military officers backed by their garrisons
or by a rabble. The mass of the population was unaffected
and did not care. Now it is the poverty-stricken, ignorant
masses in Latin America who provide the decisive weight,
or at least, the decisive threat.

The social awakening of these masses is the significant,
new feature of hemispheric life. The population explosion
—the highest rate in the world— is bringing intolerable
pressures. It demands of an underdeveloped, largely

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THE HEMISPHERE

agricultural region that it raise production fast in order
simply to stay in the same place. It drives peasants, liter-
ally by the millions, from their rural communities with,
their ancient, immutable, immemorial ways of life, into
the slums of great cities, where they provide a wretched,
bewildered ferment for the radicals and demagogues.

Everywhere there is a potentially revolutionary mass.
Nowhere is there a mature, liberal, stable, democratic
nation in our sense of these terms. By themselves, the
masses might proliferate in apathetic misery, but this is
the 1960's, and politics works in some ways almost as if it
responded to physical laws. Where there is a revolutionary
mass, there will be revolutionary leaders.

In modern times, revolutions are always led by the
middle classes, and one of the striking features of social
life in Latin America in recent decades has been the
growth of the middle class. It is even becoming what
some Latin Americanists are calling "the middle mass."
This is the element that made the Cuban Revolution as it
made the French, the Mexican, the Russian and other
modern social revolutions. They get their ideas from
totalitarian democracy or liberal democracy, from Marx-
ism or the Enlightenment, but what is new today are the
mass communications media which in Latin America
convey these ideas to the peasants in once remote regions
of the sierras, the jungles, the coastal lowlands, the valleys
of the Andes and also to the illiterate, wretched urban
proletariat of the mushrooming slum areas in the great
cities.

Keep the broad outline of the Latin American picture

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in mind. To be sure, every Latin American country is
different from every other, and if I treat the region in this
book as if it contained one nation, it is only because I am
extracting general features. The needs, desires and hopes
of a Cuban sugar worker, an Indian agricultural laborer
in the Andes, a Brazilian squatter in the Amazon valley
are the same. The cold war that has now entered the
hemisphere is the same cold war we have been fighting
everywhere else since 1945. Latin America is an under-
developed region and all underdeveloped countries have
similar problems.

There has been— and in most respects the situation is
still unchanged in Latin America— the long background
of feudalism, militarism, the small ruling classes, the social
imbalances, the agrarian and mineral economies.

The dominant hemispheric power was—and is— the
United States, with its Monroe Doctrine, its power and
wealth, its democratic, capitalistic, free-enterprise system.

On this traditional structure has come the impact of the
contemporary world, bringing demands for more effective
governments, for industrialization, for social justice. With
this goes the realization that poverty, ignorance and dis-
ease are not necessary. A popular assault is being made
against economic oligarchy as well as political dictator-
ship.

So the people of Latin America— or their spokesmen in
the middle class— ask: Who is to blame and who will sat-
isfy our demands?

These are the challenges that have been given a form
and a voice by Cuba, The blame in Cuba is put upon the

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Cuban governing classes and upon the United States.
The satisfaction is now being sought in a Leftist, non-
democratic, socialistic-type system allied to communism.

We hoped and believed that our capitalistic, free-enter-
prise, democratic system could be developed in Latin
America. The Cuban Revolution jarred us into a real-
ization that we have not yet succeeded. As President
Kennedy said to the Latin American diplomats in March
of this year: "Our unfulfilled task is to demonstrate to the
entire world that man's unsatisfied aspirations for eco-
nomic progress and social justice can best be achieved by
free men working within a framework of democratic in-
stitutions." It may be that we are deluding ourselves, and
that we will, at best, have to settle for an intermediate,
compromise solution, democratic enough, free enough,
non-Communist if not anti-Communist, neutralist, inde-
pendent.

This would be satisfactory, but can we get even that?
This is one of the dangers that the Cuban Revolution
represents for us and for the other countries of Latin
America. There are revolutionary pressures; there may
well be other revolutions. In present circumstances, these
revolutions would try to copy Cuba; they would fight
under the banner of Fidelismo; the Communists would
be partners, agitators, perhaps leaders. The revolutions
would be anti-Yankee.

What no Latin American country can do today, except
the dictatorships, is to coast along, to carry on as in the
past, to ignore the pressures for social reforms that the

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THE CUBAN STORY

Cuban Revolution and its leader, Fidel Castro, have
dramatized.

The young men of Latin America, who are now coming
to the fore, are tougher than their fathers, bolder, more
nationalistic, more radical, more adventurous, more im-
patient, more demanding, more idealistic. They will not
respond as easily to a mercenary approach, or to advice,
or threats or pressures.

If they get corrupted, it will be by power, or the lure
of power, and this goal of power is, unfortunately, more
easily reached by the swift drama of revolution, than by
the slow, plodding, unromantic way of evolution. We ask
patience, economic orthodoxy, civic virtues, discipline,
democratic elections, sacrifices by the privileged for the
underprivileged.

"Priorities will depend not merely on need/* President
Kennedy said to Congress in explaining his new program
for Latin America, "but on the demonstrated readiness
of each government to make the institutional improve-
ments which promise lasting social progress/* The chances
of getting voluntary acceptance of these sacrifices by the
governing classes is, I am afraid, less than Congress, or
perhaps even the White House, realizes.

And we ask Latin Americans to forget the past. We,
with common-sense maturity and Anglo-Saxon phlegm,
asked Fidel Castro and his fellow Cubans to forget what
had happened before January 1, 1959, as we forgot what
Germany, Italy and Japan had done to us when the
Second World War ended.

But these were young and passionate men. In a sense,

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THE HEMISPHERE

one could say that Fidel Castro is taking revenge on
behalf of generations of Cubans, and on behalf of all
Latin Americans.

There is also a Messiah complex. Fidel has all along
felt himself to be a crusader, if not a savior. He is out to
achieve a "second liberation" of Latin America. The first
was from Spain. This one is from "Yankee imperialism.'*
Fidel sees himself as the champion, not only of the Cuban
agricultural worker—the guajiro— but the Guatemalan and
Peruvian Indians, the Puerto Rican workers, even the
American Negroes.

One of the most striking and dismaying features of the
Cuban Revolution was the way in which it quickly found
itself in conflict with almost all the governments of Latin
America. This was expected, and was natural in the case
of the dictatorships of the Dominican Republic, Haiti,
Nicaragua and Paraguay. It came as a surprise in the case
of the democracies and such democratic leaders as Presi-
dent Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela, President Alberto
Lleras Carnargo of Columbia, ex-President Jose Figueres
of Costa Rica and Governor Luis Muiioz Marin of Puerto
Rico.

Ideologically, and because these were friendly govern-
ments and leaders, it seemed as if the Castro regime would
have been on good terms with them. They had all helped
the insurgent cause and wanted to help the new revolu-
tionary regime. Instead, they were insulted, and found
themselves struggling against internal oppositions which
were greatly strengthened by the Fidelistas and their new-

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THE CUBAN STORY

found allies, the Communists. In Argentina, Fidelismo
and Peronismo were soon working together.

Of the so-called invasions from Cuba only one— the
two small groups that entered the Dominican Republic in
June, 1959— had Castro's official backing. The others were
either the work of adventurers and mercenaries, like the
landings in Panama in April and in Haiti in August, 1959,
or groups that evaded Cuban vigilance. Washington made
a great propaganda splash about Cuban "expeditions" and
keeps on doing so, but no evidence was ever brought out
to prove that Fidel backed or even desired any invasion
except the Dominican one. In time, he even seems to have
made a pact of mutual forbearance with the late General-
issimo Trujillo of the Dominican Republic.

The reasons why the Castro regime found itself at odds
with all the Latin American governments before the year
1959 was out seemed logical enough. Fidel had decided
early in the game that the United States was out to frus-
trate, and then to overthrow, his regime. He felt sure
that we were working in every capital to isolate Cuba
and he realized that this was a great danger to him. As far
as he was concerned, the Organization of American States
was a creature of the United States, and hence his enemy.

Moreover, he could see an obvious fact— that all the
Latin American governments feared the example the
Cubans had set. Even the democratic countries were con-
trolled by the type of ruling class that he had destroyed
in Cuba. These men did not want to see radical revolu-
tions in their own countries.

Still another cause for conflict lay in the almost unani-

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THE HEMISPHERE

mous criticisms of the Latin American press. The news-
papers and radio and television networks were for the
most part controlled by the big business, banking and
landowning interests for whom a radical revolution like
Cuba's was anathema, Consequently, Cuba had a unani-
mously bad press, except for the Left-wing organs.

The powerful Inter- American Press Association, at first
friendly, then tolerant, became hostile when Castro gradu-
ally repressed his own newspapers, radios, and television
stations, and suppressed freedom of the press in Cuba.
Fidel had found—or believed— that a free press would
weaken his revolutionary program. This had happened in
the Mexican Revolution. With all other freedoms going
by the board, freedom of the press had to go, too.

We on The New York Times were as critical as anybody
else on that score, although we did not show the same
general sympathy for publishers and editors who had
taken subsidies from General Batista, as was the case
with all except La Prensa, the Havana Times and the
weekly, Bohemia. These, too, were victimized in time by
the regime. In any circumstances, there could be no ex-
cuse for suppressing freedom of the press, and we always
condemned the Castro Government's policy in that field.

The logic of the Cuban Revolution was reprehensible,
but it was clear. Everything and everybody against the
Revolution represented the enemy, and was attacked.
The ultimate in enmity became those who were friendly
to, or who worked with, the United States. This was the
real touchstone.

The Organization of American States is— or was before

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THE CUBAN STORY

the Cuban Revolution— the most successful of all the inter-
national organizations affiliated with the United Nations.
It had been hammered out over nearly sixty years, be-
tween 1890 and 1948 when the Bogota Charter was
drawn up. While it is true that the United States— the
Colossus of the North— dominated the OAS as it did
every feature of hemispheric life, it was an institution
that gave authority and rights to every Latin American
nation, however small. The doctrine of non-intervention
was (or seemed to be) its greatest triumph.

Fidel Castro was soon attacking the OAS as an instru-
ment of the United States. He also— verbally—repudiated
such vital hemispheric treaties as the Rio Pact, which
holds that an attack against one member is to be con-
sidered as an attack against all.

Fidel's position was open to the strongest criticism—
until we backed the Cuban invasion of April, 1961, thus,
ourselves, flagrantly violating the doctrine of non-inter-
vention.

As a matter of fact, the OAS has not shown itself to be
an instrument of United States policy, as we have never
been able to get it, collectively, to support our policies
toward the Castro regime. Nevertheless, Fidel goes on
attacking it. There is, incidentally, no provision in the
Bogota Charter for the suspension of the rights of mem-
bership or expulsion for any reason.

As a result of these conflicts and calculations, the
Fidelistas cultivated the opposition in every Latin Amer-
ican country. In the nature of things, this meant the Left-
wing, including the Communists, in each country. In

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THE HEMISPHERE

Argentina, what was left of Peronism was in the trade
unions— the descamisados, or "shirtless ones/" who gave
General Peron his mass support. The military element of
Peronism had joined the Government or become Eight-
wing.

The appeal of Fidelismo was swift and powerful. The
Cuban Revolution, on its idealistic side, was a response
to the very same problems plaguing every country of
Latin America. Wherever there was poverty, misery, real
or fancied oppression, social injustice, intellectual fer-
ment, the lure of power, the emotions of anti-Yankeeism
—and where would there not be these things?— the ex-
ample of Cuba and the romantic, magnetic figure of Fidel
Castro, cast their spell.

In chemical terms, it was like the process of catalysis.
There was a crystallization of deep and powerful social
forces, a polarization of political movements and ideol-
ogies, a ferment, a dynamism, a coming to life of hitherto
dormant elements. It was as if the whole hemisphere were
suddenly heaving and moving, responding to the natural
forces of a storm— in this case a tropical hurricane.

The world of Latin America in this year, 1961, is very
different from what it was on January 1, 1959, when Fidel
Castro and his 26th of July Movement triumphed. And
it will never be the same again.

The United States could not get the other Latin Amer-
ican countries, collectively, to follow its policies toward
Cuba. For a variety of reasons, not all of them laudable,
nations like Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama,
Peru and Paraguay followed our lead, but the major

195

THE CUBAN STORY

powers of Latin America—Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argen-
tina and Venezuela, in varying degrees and different ways
—held back.

In aH the countries, the governments had to contend
with considerable support for the Castro revolution among
intellectuals, students, opposition politicians, all the Com-
munists and Left-wingers, and among peasants whose
leaders were impressed by Cuba's agrarian reforms. More-
over, Fidel is doing things to, and taking up a posture
toward, the United States that gives satisfaction to many
among the new middle classes in Latin America. Uncle
Sam, as they see it, is at last getting his due.

The potency of myths in politics can never be over-
looked. There is a real Cuban Revolution, and there is an
image— or a whole series of images— of it. The United
States version is not accepted in Latin America, Canada
or Europe.

"Fidelismo is an image with many faces," wrote the
English weekly, The Economist, for April 22, 1961. "At
its simplest it means to millions of Latin Americans that in
a remote, but still a sister, country, a man as glamorous
as any film star has given land to the poor, rooked the
rich, and put the gringos in their place."

This has more relevance to the truth than the prevailing
North American image of a hated and hateful Communist
police state, where the people are enslaved and the
nation is nothing more than a satellite of the Sino-Soviet
bloc.

Fidel Castro and his Revolution are much better under-
stood in Latin America than in the United States. He is a

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THE HEMISPHERE

second-generation Spanish American of pure Spanish
blood. His actions and words sometimes seem extreme
to the point of madness to us, but the Spanish character is
extremist. On the whole, Fidel's behavior, given the cir-
cumstances, is considered normal— or at least not espe-
cially abnormal— to millions of Latin Americans.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the reckless-
ness and distastefulness of many of Premier Castro's
policies, and especially his links to communism, his re-
pudiation of democracy and his attacks on the middle
class, have alienated a lot of his support thoughout Latin
America. The situation was well put by Tad Szulc in a
despatch to The New York Times on January 8, 1961,

"Public opinion has been swayed against Cuba," he
wrote, "by her ties with the Communist world, the clear
emergence of dictatorial tactics by Dr. Castro's regime,
the meddling in the affairs of many other republics, her
conflict with the Roman Catholic Church and what is
being increasingly seen here as a failure of the social and
economic revolutionary experiment in terms of actually
bettering the lot of the Cubans."

This was exaggerated, I believe, but largely true,
except for the very last statement. There is no question
that Fidel Castro has thrown away a degree of attractive-
ness and influence that might well have brought other
revolutions in Latin America before this. As a purely
Latin American phenomenon that seemed at first to carry
the ideals of democracy and liberalism, as well as social
reform, with it, the Cuban Revolution would have been
irresistibly contagious.

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THE CUBAN STOEY

Its historic role, as we see now, lay in another direction,
to challenging the hemisphere to test the methods of
socialistic totalitarianism as an answer to the political,
economic and social ills which beset the region. As such,
its potential effectiveness is all the greater (and the more
dangerous to us) but the demands it makes are so
drastic, and our response has been so violent, that other
nations have thus far been unable— or unprepared— to
follow the Cuban example.

The fact still remains that the pressures for social
justice and economic development in Latin America have
never been so powerful, and these are unsatisfied. The
United States has finally been won over to a realization
that the most pressing problem in Latin America is social
development. This was recognized in a now famous speech
by the then Under-Secretary of State Douglas Dillon to
the conference of Economic Ministers of the OAS in
Bogota, Colombia, in September, 1960. It is at the heart
of President Kennedy's "Alliance for Progress" plan.

However, there does not yet seem to be a realization, in
the United States that satisfaction of social pressures has
to be found in political, as well as economic responses.
Unhappily for us, to achieve social justice, democratically,
or by evolution, is infinitely harder than to do it by revolu-
tion. In fact, in an underdeveloped region like Latin
America, revolution may prove to be the only way.

At least, the Cubans are trying to prove that it is the
only way. It is up to us to prove that social development,
in the circumstances faced by Latin American countries,
can. be achieved by our democratic, capitalistic, free-

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THE HEMISPHERE

enterprise way. The alternative is to lielp slam a lid down
—Rightist, militarist, conservative, dictatorial— on the rev-
olutionary ferment, and then to sit on it.

There are democracies in Latin America— real democ-
racies. Costa Rica, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Vene-
zuela in their different ways and degrees are all genuine
democracies. Nevertheless, as I stated before, not one of
them has produced a liberal democratic welfare state
in our understanding and practice of those terms, In de-
fending themselves against Fidelismo today, not even the
democratic nations of Latin America have a maturity and
a solidity that permits them to absorb the shock of these
new and disturbing ideas. They are shaky structures.

The simple fact that what we call Latin America today
was originally colonized by Spaniards and Portuguese,
whereas the United States and Canada were colonized by
the Engish and French, has made differences of a basic
sort that we must never forget. Spain and Portugal went
to the New World to exploit and convert. Their con-
querors and settlers were religiously and intellectually
intolerant, descendants of people who were not to know
the Reformation or the Enlightenment, and who had no
ideas, let alone desires, to implant democracy, civil
liberties, or any of the arts of self-government.

It was an aristocratic, hierarchical, autocratic system
that did not break down for centuries. Democracy and
social mobility were slow growths until recent decades.

Cuba was the last of the Spanish colonies to become
independent. The Spanish imprint remains exceptionally
strong in Cuba, despite the great influence, attraction and

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THE CUBAN STORY

power exercised by the United States in the twentieth
century. Under the veneer of Americanization, under the
subservience of the Cuban business and political ele-
ments, lay the ineradicable and dominating inheritances
of Spain and Africa.

It stood to reason— or it should have— that faced with
a crisis like the 1959 Revolution, Cubans would behave
like Cubans and not like Anglo-Saxon Americans, it
stands to reason that the rest of the hemisphere, having
to face the Cuban Revolution and its effects, would react
like Latin Americans and not like North Americans.

We should never have expected them to see eye to
eye with us about the Cuban Revolution, or about com-
munism, or about the whole complex of problems that
have brought them into their present political and eco-
nomic crisis. We see their problems in our way. We know
how we would solve them— in fact we know the true and
tried orthodox economic and financial solutions. We feel
and believe that our political system is best of all—better
than communism, better than any form of authoritarian
government.

We ask the Latin Americans to be like us, to follow us,
but they cannot do so, and in many respects they do not
want to do so. Yet, in some ways there are no morally or
practically valid arguments against what we propose.

Latin Americans should pay fair taxes. They should
accept a just distribution of wealth. They ought to make
land reforms, and make sacrifices for the education, health
and a decent standard of living of the less privileged
people in their countries. They should give the worker a

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THE HEMISPHEKE

fairer share for his labor and give him better conditions of
life.

In these respects, we are not asking Latin Americans to
do anything that we are not doing, or trying to do. We
have a right to say that we will help only those who help
themselves. What we cannot do is to compel any Latin
American country to take our advice; what we cannot
know is whether the ruling classes will want to go our
way and will pay the price for doing so; whether there is
still time, or whether the revolutionary forces at work will
sweep them away.

This is where the example of Cuba works its potent
spell Successful or not, the Castro regime is seeking the
answers to many of the evils that beset Latin America.
It is redistributing wealth; it is making a land reform; it is
concentrating on eliminating illiteracy, on raising the
standards of health, on building homes, on diversifying
agriculture, on industrialization— in short, on social justice
and economic development.

But it is doing so by socialistic, totalitarian methods, not
by democratic, capitalistic methods. This is where it chal-
lenges us, but it is also where it challenges the ruling
classes in Latin America.

There could be no greater folly than to think of Cuba
as an isolated phenomenon, or as merely an expression of
communism at work. The ferment of modern political ideas
is bubbling everywhere in Latin America, and Marxist
ideas have their place in the brew. So have the liberal,
democratic principles of the West.

The United States, after all, took revolutionary ideas to

£01

THE CUBAN STOKY

Latin America. Our concepts of equality of opportunity,
of the right of everyone to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, to a high standard of living, to social welfare,
to education, to human rights— these and other ideas by
which we live are very revolutionary, indeed. They did
not, in the past, or, I am afraid, even now, appeal to the
ruling classes of Latin America, who had such different
concepts of life and society, but they are now beginning
to have a mass appeal.

If there is a revolutionary ferment throughout Latin
America— as there is— let us not forget our part in foment-
ing it. And let us not be so illogical as to say that we can
have all the freedoms, a welfare state, a fair distribution
of wealth and a high standard of living, and we would like
to see Latin America enjoy these fine things but there must
be stability, order and the status quo.

Revolutionary ideas have a tendency to express them-
selves in revolutions.

It is true that in some countries of Latin America the
younger generation of businessmen, bankers and land-
owners, have progressive, modern ideas. They have made
a great advance beyond their parents, but they are still
not in control and there are not enough of them. They are
the hope of Latin America, but it is also the younger gen-
erations who are leading the revolutionary drive, who are
attracted by radical ideas— of ten Marxist— who are a prey
to xenophobic nationalism, who see the Cuban Revolution
as an example to be followed, and are attracted by the
romantic figure of Fidel Castro.

The governing classes in Latin America are not thinking

THE HEMISPHERE

in terms of expropriation or a totalitarian economy that, in
their case, would be Right-wing, which is to say Fascist
or national-socialist. There is simply a failure, thus far, to
accept the price that would have to be paid for industriali-
zation and land reform. The ruling classes of Latin Amer-
ica are being called upon to make sacrifices of their wealth
and privileges such as they never had to make in the past.
They are called upon for a type of patriotism and civic
virtue that was not necessary before and that was even
outside of their ethics and their mores.

We should not underestimate how much we— and the
social pressures of these revolutionary times—are demand-
ing of the hereditary, traditional ruling classes of Latin
America. The pessimism that most students of the Latin
American scene feel nowadays is partly due to a realiza-
tion of the magnitude of these demands.

On the economic side, the need for industrialization
and, specifically, the infrastructure of roads, railroads,
steel mills, petrochemical plants and other heavy indus-
tries, is obvious. The trouble is that the various countries
have been relying too heavily on American and other for-
eign investors to provide this infrastructure when they
could raise the capital themselves— or much of it— by ade-
quate taxation and the proper use and distribution of their
land.

Moreover, economic nationalism— the insistence on
keeping the foreigners out of key industries like oil, power,
railroads and public utilities, and even the nationalization
of these industries— is a bedeviling factor. Too often, Latin
Americans want to eat their cake and have it, a process

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THE CUBAN STORY

that they might think the Cubans have pulled off success-
fully. Revolutions defy the laws of orthodox economics,
and in a sense they get away with it. From the point of
view of law-abiding, orthodox economists and statesmen,
it is highway robbery but, even so, the robbers benefit
temporarily by the use of their loot.

There are plenty of enlightened leaders in Latin Amer-
ica and a great number among the ruling classes who see
what needs to be done and who want to do it. They are
willing to make sacrifices, to pay adequate taxes, to make
social reforms, but there are many others among them
who will not do so voluntarily. The instinct is still, and
always, to pass the buck to us.

I think this is an inescapable conclusion for any student
of Latin American affairs. We can help a country, for
instance, to draw up an equitable income- and land-tax
system; we cannot make it enforce the plan. In conquered
Japan in 1946 we could impose a drastic agrarian reform-
more drastic than the Cuban one; we cannot do that in any
Latin American country.

In an article for Harper's Magazine for July, 1961, an
American businessman and student of hemispheric affairs,
Peter F. Drucker, listed some of the things that ought to be
done.

"The traditional tools of foreign aid— money and trained
men," he wrote, "will never do the job until Latin Amer-
icans face up to the rough things which they alone can do:
collect taxes from the rich and clean out the sinecure jobs
in the swollen government services; push through land
reform and cheap mass housing; stop subsidizing the

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THE HEMISPHERE

wrong crops; get rid of the pettifogging regulations that
now separate the individual states of Brazil by mountains
of red tape; enforce the factory and mining-inspection
laws already on the statute books; and say 'no* to the
blackmail of the generals who habitually threaten to over-
throw a regime unless they get a few more unneeded jet
planes, tanks or destroy ers."

Simple? But this would require a transformation of the
Latin American scene— in other words, a true "revolu-
tion." Can it be done peacefully? Can it be done our way?

"Latin America is in revolution/' Adlai Stevenson said
on his return from a trip there in April, 1960. "The dicta-
tors are being swept aside. . . . The whole continent is
on the verge of great economic development, and they
are going to build a new society under our methods of free
enterprise, if possible, and if not, under socialism,"

Fidel Castro and his associates say the answer is social-
ism. We say capitalism.

One of the most crucial questions of today's world is
whether our capitalistic, free-enterprise system of economy
is better suited to the underdeveloped south of the globe
than the socialistic, totalitarian system. Let us not be too
sure of ourselves or self-righteous about this. Moral factors
are not going to be decisive. Victory will go to the side
that persuades the masses, or that forces the masses, to
accept its system and then proves it can provide the an-
swers to their needs.

Our industrialists, economists and bankers, sitting in the
midst of the proofs of their success, have nevertheless
failed in Latin America. The trade, the investments, the

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THE CUBAN STOKY

aid, the technology, have not brought adequate standards
of living to the masses in Latin America, have not bene-
fited the people, have not distributed wealth, have not
built national economies that give these countries a sense
of sovereignty and independence.

This is not necessarily a fair criticism of American busi-
nessmen and the officials of the United States Treasury.
They were certainly not evil men and, in fact, they have
done an enormous amount of good. It so happens that
in today's world their methods are not enough; they work
too slowly; they benefit too few people at the top— or their
benefits are not seeping downward to the masses fast
enough.

They may take a righteous comfort, for instance, in
pointing out that the miners in the American-owned cop-
per industry of Chile earn the equivalent of $90 a week,
while workers in Chilean-owned industries average $14 a
week. It so happens that this sort of disparity in wage
standards sets up dangerous social ferments.

The answer is obviously not for the American employers
to reduce their wages to national levels, even if they could,
nor is it possible for the low national wages to be raised to
meet American standards. A widespread, massive attack
has to be made on industry, agriculture and the social fac-
tors that foster disparities which are no longer endurable.

Can this be done by evolution— by our way? or can it
only be done by revolution— the Cuban way?

Or is there an intermediate way? Must it be either free
enterprise or statism? Our industrialists, our investors, our
government officials are so blindly committed to the sys-

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THE HEMISPHERE

tern of free enterprise that we are finding ourselves some-
what out of tune with large sectors of Latin American
opinion.

The psychology of our world today djrives political lead-
ers toward the safeguarding of national resources, the
control of heavy industries and public utilities, and the
promotion of social reforms and, by this token, the yield-
ing to liberal or Left-wing pressure groups. Governments
that respond to these pressures (Venezuela and Mexico
are recent examples) find the American investor turning
away.

In general, American private investments in Latin
America have fallen off in the last few years— in other
words, since the Cuban Revolution set up a chain reaction
of social pressures and fears to which governments and
investors responded in their different ways. The tragedy
is that every move by Latin American Governments, or
by their oppositions, to protect resources or stimulate eco-
nomic growth through state action has been resented and
fought as Fidelismo—ox even communism. The polariza-
tion of ideas and emotions is such that anything which
seeks to change the existing economic structure is con-
demned. Yet, if the economic structure is not changed
voluntarily and peacefully, there is going to have to be a
totalitarianism of the Right or Left. The American free-
enterprise investor will be left sitting forlornly like King
Canute while the tide sweeps in around him.

These facts are being recognized in Washington and
in many or most of the Latin American capitals. The
economic conferences of Bogota and Punta del Este, the

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THE CUBAN STORY

"Alliance for Progress" plan of the United States, like the
previous "Operation Pan America" of Brazil, all point in
the same direction. They are efforts to meet the demands
for social justice as well as economic development by a
combination of government aid and private enterprise.

Only a totalitarian system can long withstand a discon-
tented people.

The falling off in United States private investments since
1959 is a factor working for the Cubans. It sets a vicious
circle in motion: the Americans are getting to be afraid
to invest because of the threat of revolutions, but the lack
of American investments will intensify Latin America's
already serious economic problems and hence intensify
revolutionary pressures.

The Kennedy "Alliance for Progress" plan is an attempt
to fill the gap. But it can only be a beginning and, being
Government aid, it represents taxpayers' money. Can Latin
Americans ask North Americans to pay taxes to aid them
when their own moneyed, property-owning, salaried class
won't pay income taxes in their own countries?

Many students of Latin American affairs believe that
the answer to the worst economic and social evils of the
region lies in taxation. The ruling classes— landowners,
businessmen, financiers, high military officers, leaders in
the well-paid professions (not teaching!)— do not pay a
fraction of the income or land taxes that we and the Euro-
pean nations would consider fair and adequate.

Taxation is not progressive. We and the British, for
instance, have created our welfare states, with their fair
distribution of wealth by progressively higher taxation of

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THE HEMISPHERE

incomes. Moreover, we and other states like us, have
evolved taxation systems that cannot be evaded. We pay
our taxes or we are punished. The evasion of taxation in
Latin America is easy, and it is prevalent. Tax officials
are nearly always underpaid and therefore susceptible to
bribery, particularly in an atmosphere where tax evasion
is normal.

This was, for instance, the state of affairs in Cuba before
1959. It is being corrected by the Revolution. If the neces-
sity for paying taxes takes hold, Cuba will have gained
something precious by the Revolution. This is one of the
many ways in which the Cubans are at least trying to
remedy social evils that they inherited. Even if they fail,
the fact that they are trying at all is important. It is the
sort of thing which is attracting attention and respect in
other Latin American countries.

In some of these countries efforts are being made to
reform the tax systems but they do not remotely strike
deeply enough. The ruling classes will, after all, have to
tax themselves and they have not yet reached a state of
rnind, a stage of maturity or a state of fear that will induce
them to say: "We will abandon our special privileges,
divide our lands, share our profits, pay just taxes."

Why should they do so if they do not, as they seem
to think, have to do so? If you had asked these questions
of the Cuban ruling classes five years ago you would have
got a dusty answer. So they had a revolution!

The tragedy is that the Cuban Revolution in its present
form has not been an answer, either, because it exacts

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THE CUBAN STORY

such a high, price for Its reforms. It divides, destroys and
levels down, and sends freedom and democracy away.

I believe any student of Latin American affairs would
agree that the people of Latin America, or an overwhelm-
ing majority of them, do not want societies that are regi-
mented, socialistic, dictatorial and combative. Still less
would they want regimes that are Communist or allied
with and riddled with communism.

The best that can be said for a social revolution is that
it may in certain circumstances be the only answer to an
unjust, corrupt and—from the nationalistic point of view-
humiliating state of affairs. This was the case in Cuba.

I do not say that Cuba was ripe for this particular revo-
lution in the form it has taken. Certainly, it was not the
revolution for which the middle classes of the civic re-
sistance fought— and one sees them all now in opposition.
They wanted a political revolution, as was noted before,
that would make drastic social reforms, but would keep
the social changes within the framework of a democratic
structure— that is to say elections, a legislature, an inde-
pendent judiciary, the rule of law, a free press, habeas
corpus and all the other civic freedoms. This is what Fidel
Castro promised them.

I still believe that this was the type of revolution he
thought he could make and that was why he promised
these things. The great question to be asked about Cuba—-
and it would be the question to be asked if there were
other similar revolutions in Latin America— is whether it
is possible to make a drastic social revolution of an ex-
treme, nationalistic type within a democratic structure.

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THE HEMISPHERE

Fidel Castro was soon convinced that he could not do
so. Let me repeat that I am not making a moral judgment
in saying that given the problems he faced, internally and
externally, given the character of the Cuban people, and
given the determination to make a radical, social revolu-
tion, Fidel came up with a logical answer. It may well be
that there could have been a better answer.

At least the methods he has been using, the policies he
has been following in Cuba and on the world stage, have
in effect, given Cuba a social revolution, a place in the
world out of all proportion to Cuba's size and resources,
and the Cubans have set an example that other countries
in the hemisphere may try to follow.

Fidel Castro is one of the half dozen most famous men
in the world today. Fortunately for us there are no other
Fidel Castros around, but there are revolutionary pres-
sures. There is still only too much reason to believe that
if there are other Latin American revolutions they will try
to model themselves on Cuba. That is to say, they will be
Leftist, pro-Communist, anti-Yankee and non-democratic.

One must always make that qualification— "try" to be
like Cuba. The United States has made it clear that Amer-
ican power will be used to prevent any more Castr5-type
revolutions in Latin America, In so doing, will we not be
lining ourselves up with the forces of reaction against
social reforms? There is a real danger that the Latin
American reaction to Fidelismo will be Eight-wing, mili-
tary oligarchies. The temptation for the United States to
accept— or even to welcome them— will be great.

This is the dilemma that we and the ruling classes of

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THE CUBAN STORY

Latin America face today. The solution is to provide
social reforms, or the hope of them, and thus forestall any
more revolutions, or at least any serious ones. In that aim
we should be helped by the fears that the Cuban Revolu-
tion has engendered.

"We call for social change by free men/' as President
Kennedy put it.

The magnitude of the problem is frightening. For our
purposes it is simply necessary to note some general
features.

The average per capita income of Latin America's 200,-
000,000 people is a third that of Western Europe and a
seventh that of the United States. The journal of the new
Inter-American Development Bank, Ecos de la America
Latina, says that at the present rate of economic growth
it will take Latin America 252 years to reach a level one
third of the present United States average per capita
income.

There are not only appalling deficiencies in housing,
education, health services and water supplies, but agri-
tural production, upon which the region depends, is at
a lower level today than it was twenty-five years ago.
A report made for the Punta del Este Conference of the
OAS in August, 1961, said this low productivity was the
result of "an extremely unequal distribution of land own-
ership, obsolete production methods and often undesirable
practices in the employment and compensation of agri-
cultural labor." Put these polite phrases into their real
terms of social and human misery and you can get some
feeling of what is agitating essentially rural Latin America.

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THE HEMISPHERE

We had what might be called our agrarian reform in the
United States after the War of Independence and finished
it some time after the Homestead Act of 1862— let us say
it took one hundred years. We could tell the Cuban and
Peruvian and Colombian and Brazilian peasants that if
they and their descendants would only wait a hundred
years they will have a fine agrarian reform.

They won't listen— not today, not with Russia and China
showing them how it can be done quickly— in their ruth-
less and costly way.

Chester Bowles, who was then a Representative from
Connecticut, in an article on land reform in Latin Amer-
ica for the Times Magazine Section on November 22, 1959,
pointed out that "1.5 per cent of the people, those with
15,000 acres or more each, own half of all the agricul-
tural land in Latin America/' President Kennedy has
given comparable figures, and as he said: <cThe uneven
distribution of land is one of the gravest social problems
in many Latin American countries."

Former Secretary of State Herter, belatedly, but never-
theless admirably, announced United States support for
agrarian reforms in Latin America in a speech to the
Council of the Organization of American States on April
20, 1960. Land reform is also one of the key features of
the programs announced at Bogota in September, 1960,
and at Punta del Este in 1961.

The primary obstacle is the Latin American landowner,
often an aristocrat who inherited his land, or a newly rich
businessman who gets power and social status by owning
land. Their aim, usually, is to grow cash crops like sugar,

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THE CUBAN STORY

coffee and cotton and the methods are antiquated and
inefficient,

As Mr. Bowles wrote: "Sweeping changes in Latin
American land tenure are inevitable/' But here, again, we
and they face the dilemma: Shall it be by democratic
evolution or by revolution?

In Cuba, with which we are especially concerned, 8 per
cent of all landowners held more than 71.1 per cent of the
land, according to the last inventory taken in 1946. It could
hardly have improved during the Batista regime. Small
holders (up to about 30 acres) owned 39 per cent of all
the farms, but only 3.3 per cent of the cultivable land.

The guajiro, or peasant, was for the most part a laborer
on land that belonged to the big Cuban and American
landowners, On the sugar plantations, where the trade
unions enforced good wages, the peasant had three or at
best four months' work a year. For the most part he was
unemployed the rest of the year.

The average peasant lived at a bare subsistence level,
illiterate, ill-housed, diseased. Is it not ridiculous for Amer-
icans, and for the Cuban exiles in Miami, to come along
now and pity these guajirosP Now, for the first time, they
are being taken care of, given year-round work, new
houses, schools for their children, new wells, roads, hos-
pitals. What sense does it make to tell them that they are
no longer free men living under a democratic regime be-
cause they have to work for cooperatives or State-owned
farms? /'

The growth rate of production per head has practically
halted in Latin America since 1955. Yet the population

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THE HEMISPHERE

is growing at the fastest rate in the world, ranging be-
tween 2.5 and 3 per cent. The report to the Montevideo
Conference mentioned above calls for an average yearly
rate of growth of real output of at least 5 per cent. In
present circumstances it looks as if there will have to be a
miracle.

I do not mean to give the impression that Latin Amer-
ica, or its economy, is stagnant. There are few areas in the
world in greater ferment or more dynamic in every sense
of the word. The point I want to make is that, generally
speaking, per capita economic growth has not kept pace
with population growth in recent years, and it has cer-
tainly not kept pace with the "revolution of rising expec-
tations/'

Moreover, the world prices of the commodities upon
which Latin American economy depends so heavily have
dropped, on the whole, in the last four years, while the
cost of imports has increased. Few of the countries have
escaped more or less severe inflation. Unemployment rates
are abnormally high in the cities.

A half or more of the population of Latin America are
not consumers at all in the sense of buying imports or
manufactured goods; they live on what they grow or make
or scrounge, To them, it makes little difference whether
the national economy is growing or declining and whether
American investments are going up or down.

President Kennedy put his finger on the nub of the
problem in his "Alliance for Progress" message to Con-
gress last March when he said: "Economic growth without
social progress lets the great majority of the people remain

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THE CUBAN STORY

in poverty while a privileged few reap the benefits of
rising abundance."

By and large, there is a profound discontent throughout
the area, rooted in the economic state of affairs. It has
dangerous revolutionary possibilities; and revolutionary
ideas, as I keep saying, have a tendency to take the form
of Fidelismo. One of the wisest young statesmen of Latin
America, Foreign Minister Julio Cesar Turbay of Colom-
bia, has put it this way: "We will direct the evolution of
our countries or our masses will direct their revolution."

The lines of direction are clear enough. On the economic
side they are industrialization and increased agricultural
output. On the political side they can be summed up as
social justice for the masses— jobs for the urban workers,
land to till, education, health, a fairer distribution of
wealth, a higher standard of living.

How easy it is to formulate what is needed—and how
hard to provide it! With variations, men and women have
always wanted these things. What is new in history is that
—allowing for some exaggeration— all men and women now
demand these things, regardless of birth or color or race
or where they were born. And they are demanding them
impatiently.

The problem of providing enough economic and finan-
cial aid to satisfy the needs of Latin Americans is beyond
our resources or those of the Soviet bloc. In theory we
could do it by going on a war footing of controlled econ-
omy, austerity and sacrifices, which we are not going to
do. Unfortunately for us, the Sino-Soviet bloc can force its
people to make economic sacrifices for political gains.

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THE HEMISPHERE

We have, for instance, been seeing Communist China send
rice to Cuba in 1961 at a time when her own people were
starving.

In explaining his success in getting economic help from
the Communist bloc on a trip at the end of I960, Che
Guevara said: "We could not make such a request on an
economic basis; this was simply a political request/' We
did somewhat the same thing in Europe with the Marshall
Plan. It required real sacrifices on the part of every Amer-
ican citizen— and it paid off. Yet we have been unwilling to
meet a similar challenge in our own hemisphere. Latin
America did not have any part in the Marshall Plan.

President Kennedy's "Alliance for Progress" plan is our
substitute. It is also the American answer to Fidel Castro.
The idea of offering $500,000,000 as a first installment of
economic and social aid was originally put forward by
Under-Secretary Dillon at Bogota for President Eisen-
hower in September, 1960. It was immediately labeled the
"Castro Plan" by ironical Latin Americans. Certainly, they
had Fidel Castro to thank.

The concept of devoting money, credit, goods and tech-
nical aid to a program concentrating on social development
is splendid. The main objectives are land, education and
housing— and they could not be better. The Punta del Este
Conference in August, 1961, tried to give practical form
to the goals.

We are concerned here primarily with the question of
whether the United States, with the cooperation of the
Latin American governments, can come up with satisfac-
tory answers to the revolutionary pressures which are

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THE CUBAN STORY

being given an example, a form and a direction by the
Cuban Revolution. In this respect, as in other ways, the
Cuban phenomenon is forcing us to go to the heart of the
matter.

In its simplest expression, we must answer the question
being asked in Latin America and everywhere in the
underdeveloped world: Which way will bring us social
justice sooner, your capitalistic, free-enterprise system, or
the Communist socialistic, totalitarian system?

Nothing could be more dangerous than to fall back on
the complacent, smug, self-righteous assurance that our
form of capitalism is, of course, the best— and also morally
right. However fervently we believe this, it is still a fact
that we have not convinced the people of the underdevel-
oped nations and it is also a fact that the Communist bloc,
especially the Soviet Union, is proving that its system
works. Students of Russian affairs, in fact, tell us that the
rate of economic growth in the Soviet Union is faster than
ours.

Too many Americans are missing the point about the
appeal of communism in Latin America. Our mood is one
of anger and irritation with Cuba and a naive belief that
the danger lies in subversion by Marxist-Leninist ideol-
ogy working from a Cuban base.

The true danger, and the true appeal of communism
in Latin America is material and practical. China may be
having agrarian troubles in recent years that are setting
the country back, but taking the long range picture, both
the Soviet Union and Red China have a remarkably effec-
tive argument in Latin America. (Incidentally, they are

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THE HEMISPHERE

believed to be spending something like $100,000,000 in
propaganda in Latin America alone, every year. This is
more than we spend for similar purposes in the whole
world. )

In essence, the Russians and Chinese say this: "Like you,
we were underdeveloped, agrarian nations in which our
peasants and workers were downtrodden and neglected.
As you see (and we have invited many thousands from
your lands to come and see) we have industrialized with-
out foreign investments and we have bettered the lot of
our workers and peasants. We give education and jobs to
all our young people and positions of leadership to the best
among them, regardless of birth, race, creed or color. You
can do the same with our methods and our help/*

As an example of how they can help, they are now
pointing to Cuba. We know the price that two generations
of Russians have had to pay for this material triumph and
we can see the price that the Chinese people are in process
of paying. Capital had to be formed somehow, and while
it did not come from foreign investments it did come from
the equivalent of slave labor and a temporary lowering of
living standards of virtually everybody to a subsistence
level.

In the United States, Canada and Western Europe—
and for that matter among the ruling classes of Latin
America— such a price is intolerable. There is not the
slightest danger of such a way of life appealing to more
than a tiny minority in a country like the United States,
with all due respect to the McCarthyites, John Birchers,
Unamericans and the like.

219

THE CUBAN STORY

But we are now considering the situation in Latin
America. One graphic way of approaching the problem
was put to me by President Alberto Lleras Camargo of
Colombia, as wise and liberal and democratic a statesman
as is to be found in the hemisphere.

"Can I go out into the countryside/' he asked me the
last time I was in Bogota, "and go up to a peasant, stand-
ing in rags in front of his hovel, with his wife and children
similarly ill-clothed, undernourished and no schools or
hospitals for them to go to— can I say to this man: 'You
are fortunate now; we have kicked out the dictator; you
have freedom and democracy?* "

Naturally the peasant asks: "But will your democracy
and freedom give me bread and clothes and a decent
house, a school for my children, a hospital when we are
ill?"

To be honest, the President and all of us have to say:
"Yes, but you must be patient. These things take time."
The Communists have no scruples in promising speedy
social justice that they know they will not be able to
provide but, here again, we must not miss the point. The
men who would lead this Colombian peasant and other
millions like him in Latin America into social revolutions
would not simply be cynical, greedy, power-hungry dema-
gogues from the middle classes. They would be young men
who have persuaded themselves that the totalitarian so-
cialistic method is the best way for their countries.

This is what has happened in Cubal In order to under-
stand the situation— and it is a Latin American situation—

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THE HEMISPHERE

put yourselves in the place of the young Cubans who are
making this Revolution.

As I keep saying, there is a stubborn tendency here to
look at Cuba and Latin America in terms of our own
stable, mature, democratic, capitalistic, free-enterprise
system and way of life. These yardsticks do not fit; they
do not apply; they will not work. When you use them you
come up with the wrong answers. Cubans do not think
the way we do, or feel the way we feel, or see the problems
of the world, including communism, as we see them. The
Cubans are not Anglo-Saxons, nor is Fidel Castro a John
Kennedy gone wild.

Take capitalistic free enterprise, for instance. As so
brilliantly defined and interpreted by American thinkers
like Adolf Berle, who headed a Latin American task force
for President Kennedy, our capitalism is, in truth, an effi-
cient, democratic system that distributes wealth fairly and
brings a high standard of living to a higher percentage of
the population than any system ever devised.

So we say: "If it has done this for us, it can do the same
for the nations and the masses in Latin America."

The young Cuban revolutionaries, looking at what capi-
talism and free enterprise meant to their country, with its
rewards for the few, its corruption, its fantastically high
unemployment rate, its subservience to the United States,
said: "We have no faith in your capitalism; we do not
want it*

It is vain for us to argue that they have had a parody,
or a corrupt form of what modern capitalism can be; that
their ruling classes and some American investors had be-

THE CUBAN STORY

trayed the Cuba people. This was not an argument that
could get a hearing. It was too late in Cuba.

In Latin America capitalism and free enterprise have
not, as with us, operated to raise the general standard of
living, to distribute wealth, to give the worker and farmer
an ever greater share of the produce of their toil, to bring
them leisure and the means to enjoy it. It has, on the
whole, meant wealth, privilege and power to a few at the
top and good profits for American investors. It has not
greatly altered the traditionally hierarchical social system,
with its exclusivity, its aristocracy of family and wealth, its
color bars, its social immobility, its caste privileges. It has
not brought what sociologists call pluralism— the melting
pot, equality, fraternity.

The thinking is doubtless twisted, but is it not under-
standable for a Latin American to say: "We have been
trying your capitalistic methods and things are getting
worse; let us try the other method'?

We must recognize that the appeal of Marxism to Cuban
revolutionaries like Fidel Castro, and more notably to his
chief economic and financial adviser, Che Guevara, is
great, and that it is not simply the result of anti- Yankee-
ism, Soviet blandishments and orders, or a perverted de-
sire to maintain power at all costs. There has been a gen-
uine conversion to a belief that socialistic methods are
best suited to solve the problems faced by revolutionary
Cuba.

This is the sort of thinking we must fear in the rest
of Latin America. President Eisenhower was in Santiago,
Chile, early in 1960. While he was there, the University

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THE HEMISPHERE

Students' Federation of Chile wrote him an open letter
which read, in part: "If the injustices of today are all
that Christianity or democracy can offer this continent,
no one should be surprised if the best children of these
nations turn toward communism, seeking those elemen-
tary needs which they lack and which are the essentials to
morality and civilization: food, shelter and education/'

The answer prepared for President Eisenhower and
later published was not convincing to these students. The
leaders were invited to the United States and were im-
pressed, but afterwards they went to Cuba and were im-
pressed there, too.

But the impression was not made by communism in
Cuba. It cannot be stressed too often or too much that
the appeal of Fidelismo in Latin America is wider and
deeper than the appeal of communism. In the United
States, and in governing circles in Latin America, for that
matter, there is a tendency to believe— or at least to say-
that Fidelismo and comunmno are exactly synonymous.

We have not convinced the Latin Americans (or the
Europeans for that matter) that the Cuban Revolution is
simply a Communist revolution. Ambassador Adlai Ste-
venson learned that on his trip to South America in June,
1961. They know better. It is a paradox, but Latin Amer-
icans would continue to see this revolution as a Cuban and
Latin American phenomenon even if it went on to call
itself a Communist regime, as it now calls itself a Socialist
regime.

For one thing, as I have said before, it would not be
recognizable in Moscow or Peiping as communism. At the

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THE CUBAN STORY

meeting of the eighty-one Communist parties of the world
in the Kremlin in November, 1960, a new categoiy was
invented: 'Independent national democracies/' Cuba was
put in this grouping, and solidarity with her was pledged
by "the Socialist countries, the entire international Com-
munist movement, the proletariat of all the regions of the
world," in Premier Khrushchev's words.

Whether this is semantics or not; whether we in the
United States want to say there is no difference, the fact
remains that in Latin America a distinction is made be-
tween Fidelismo and communism. If we are successful in
pinning a purely Communist label on the Castro regime,
we will have a much less difficult problem with which to
deal, for this aspect of the Cuban Revolution weakens its
appeal in other countries.

Meanwhile we must realize that the importance, the
influence and the attraction of the Cuban Revolution in
Latin America is not in its communistic coloration or its
alliance with the Sino-Soviet bloc. The appeal lies in the
fact that the Cubans are making a revolution which seeks
to answer the problems that virtually all the Latin coun-
tries face.

Fidelismo attracts students and intellectuals, some in-
dustrial workers, the extreme nationalists with their anti-
Yankeeism, the political oppositions of the Left and among
these (as among all the other elements in varying degree)
we find the Communists. Everywhere, as they did in Cuba,
the Reds are getting on the Fidelista bandwagon. The
non-Communist radicals are attracted by the Cuban Revo-
lution, not by communism. Both Fidelismo and commu-

224

THE HEMISPHERE

nism are providing the vehicle or means of expression for
the social pressures that threaten to take a revolutionary
form.

It has been utterly useless for Americans— government
officials, businessmen and press commentators— to say to
Fidel Castro and his associates: "We like your revolution
and will support it, but you must give up the Communists
and the support of the Sino-Soviet bloc/'

If we had followed different policies in 1959 we may
or may not have brought about that result. By I960, and
certainly in 1961, we were asking the impossible. That is
to say, we were, in effect, asking Fidel Castro to give up
his Revolution. President Kennedy goes on demanding the
same thing, and perhaps it is good propaganda; perhaps it
is a necessity. Let us not try to fool ourselves or anybody
else. This is an oblique way of saying that we intend to
destroy the Castro regime if we can.

Our position, as stated by President Kennedy is that
"the United States would never permit the establishment
of a regime dominated by international communism in the
Western Hemisphere."

It remains to be seen whether we can make good on that
threat in the long run, but one thing is certain— the answers
to Fidelismo and communism in Latin America cannot be
negative. They do not lie in the field of anti-communism
or in maintaining the status quo at the cost of supporting
Right-wing military dictatorships. This must be empha-
sized because our record in Latin America since the Second
World War has been to oppose communism everywhere
and at all costs, but not to oppose Right-wing, f ascistoid,

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military dictatorships. In fact, we often went out of our
way to favor the dictators.

The need for a new policy was recognized by President
Kennedy. When he appointed Dean Rusk Secretary of
State, he said:

"It is my hope that in the coming years the foreign
policy of the United States will be identified in the minds
of the people of the world as a policy that is not merely
anti-Communist, but is rather for freedom, that seeks not
merely to build strength in a power struggle, but is con-
cerned with the struggle against hunger, disease and il-
literacy/*

This is a position more advanced, more sophisticated and
more in tune with necessities than that held by a great
majority in Congress during the Eisenhower Administra-
tion. However, the policy of using American aid to en-
courage social development in Latin America began with
the Eisenhower Government.

If we had insisted on social reforms in Cuba sixty, fifty
or thirty years ago (and we were in a position to do so)
there would be no Cuban Revolution today.

But if we insist that social reform in Latin America must
not bear the imprint of Fidelmno or communism, what
then? The revolutionary pressures in Latin America do
have these labels. In any event, they are radical, Leftist,
nationalistic.

It is a sad acknowledgment to make— that we, with our
wonderful Constitution and Bill of Rights, our freedom,
our democracy, our equality, our fantastically high stand-
ard of living, should fear the undeniable and natural fact

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THE HEMISPHERE

that Latin Americans now want, now demand what we
have, what we helped to teach them to want.

When they set out to get these things, are we going to
say it is communism? Or are we going to let the Com-
munists be the champions of a social justice that we op-
pose because it is demanded, among others, by the Com-
munists and the Fidelistas?

The Cubans are making a great play throughout the
hemisphere of our supposed opposition to social reforms.
Che Guevara put it crudely but effectively when he said:
"By replying to the question of whether one is with Cuba
or against her, one can tell if that person is for or against
the people."

The dilemma that we face is not only baffling and pain-
ful; it is crucial. A friendly or neutral Latin America with
which we can trade, upon whose raw materials we can
draw, from which we know that a military attack against
us is unthinkable— such a Latin America is vital to our
existence as the pre-eminent power in the free world. This
statement, which may sound dramatic, could be docu-
mented.

The security of the continental United States for the last
150 years has, in a crucial sense, been based on our her
gemony in the Western Hemisphere. Now, as an indirect
result of the Cuban Revolution, that hegemony is being
challenged.

Latin America has been our sphere of influence. In the
world of power politics it is our area, and we have the
Monroe Doctrine to prove it. We are the Colossus of the
North, and no European nation has been allowed to exer-

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else political influence, let alone power, south of the Rio
Grande.

Can we lose that hegemony now? The fact that the ques-
tion has to be asked, that there is even a possibility of our
position being lost or seriously weakened, proves in itself
how grave a challenge we are facing from the forces un-
leashed by the Cuban Revolution.

When Premier Khrushchev made his flamboyant threat
in July, 1960, to use nuclear weapons against the United
States if we intervened militarily in Cuba, he knew that we
had no intention of sending American troops into Cuba
and we knew that he had no intention of waging a third
world war, with all that it means, because of Cuba, The
significance of his gesture— which he, himself, later called
symbolic— was that a Latin American country was for the
first time accepting military protection from a European
power, not from the United States or the Inter- American
System.

Those of us working in the Latin American field and
seeking to grasp the real, the profound, the historic forces
at work feel almost tempted to brush aside these surface
manifestations, of which communism is one. That, of
course, would be idiotic, but the impulse is based on a
legitimate desire to get at the root of the trouble in Latin
America, at the causes of a phenomenon like the Cuban
Revolution.

Let me repeat that the basic cause of the revolutionary
ferment in Latin America is social. It is the demand for
what we are conveniently labeling social justice that is
pressing upon the political and economic structures in

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THE HEMISPHERE

such a way as to endanger their solidity, to distort them, to
give them new and dangerous directions.

These are nations seeking the answers to their insuffi-
ciencies, their maladjustments, their distortions, their in-
justices. These are people striving for material betterment,
hut also for human dignity and, to an extent we do not
grasp in the United States, for national sovereignty, for
independence from domination or dictation by outsiders.

"In a real sense/* as Professor Frank Tannenbaum of
Columbia University has written, "the United States and
the non-industrial areas, including Latin America, live in
separate worlds, and matters of most concern to one lie
beyond the basic preoccupation of the other/'

It is hard for Americans to realize the extent to which
we live in a world of our own, with ideas and values that
others do not share. This is as true of Europeans as it is of
Latin Americans. In any event, what counts in the rela-
tions between nations is not common ideas or moral values,
but, as Lord Palmerston pointed out a long time ago, com-
mon interests. I would not feel at all sure that our way of
life— our democratic, capitalistic, free-enterprise system-
is applicable to Latin America in its present stage of under-
development, and considering all the historical, traditional,
social, religious and racial factors at work.

As Latin Americans search for the answers to their prob-
lems, we say to them: "You will find the answers as we
have found them. It is our example that you should emu-
late."

The real meaning, and the real importance of the Cuban
Revolution is that it challenges this contention. It says:

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"You will find the answers in a totalitarian system reached
through a social revolution. Your examples are to be found
in the East, not in the West. With their methods and their
help we will make a Cuban Revolution, a Latin American
revolution.'*

For the first time, Latin Americans do not need to look
abroad for something different. It is in their midst.

It is important to us— and we believe to Cuba and Latin
America— that this type of revolution should fail. Yet it is
even more important to realize that its failure would ulti-
mately solve nothing. Kill Fidel Castro and overthrow his
regime, and this particular revolution, in this form, would
be over in Cuba, but we would have exactly the same
forces to contend with, the same searching for answers and
solutions that we have today. Meanwhile, Cuba would be
suffering the horrors of bloodshed and anarchy.

We would cure the patient by killing him— as we tried to
do with the invasion of April, 1961. There are no easy
answers to our conflict with Cuba, because the answers
that have to be found for the island off our shore are the
same answers that we need for the whole vast area of
twenty countries and a continent and a half.

230

CHAPTER SIX

The United States

UNITED STATES POLICY toward Cuba since early in 1960
has been to destroy the Castro regime. This is the key
factor around which relations between Cuba and the
United States have revolved.

This statement is not made to absolve Fidel Castro and
his Government of their share of the responsibility for
carrying events to a point where such a decision seemed
necessary to the Eisenhower Administration. I think the
decision was at least made too soon. It was certainly made
without a correct understanding of what was happening
in Cuba, why it was happening, how strong the Castro
regime was, and how much all of Latin America would
resent United States intervention in Cuba and anywhere
else.

The Kennedy Administration carried on the Cuban pol-
icies of the preceding Administration. The policies were
bad and they led to die incredible and inexcusable fiasco

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of the invasion of April, 1961. None of this is wisdom
after the event. None of it— let me repeat— is intended to
excuse bad, ignorant and often inexcusable policies on
the part of the Castro Government. It was as if a curse
had been put upon both our countries.

In some curious way, the Cuban Revolution aroused
an emotionalism in the United States that had not been
seen since the Spanish Civil War. The history of Cuba
began on January 1, 1959, for virtually all Americans.
They did not know what had happened before; they did
not understand the real reasons for the summary execu-
tions of "war criminals"; they were told that the Com-
munists were taking over, although at that time they
were of little importance.

The Cubans on their part had always been convinced
that the Administration in Washington was out to destroy
the Revolution. They really believed that the hostile press
in the United States, the distortions and falsities, as well
as the facts being printed here, the welcome given by
Congressional committees to Cubans known to have been
sadists, assassins and thieves in the Batista regime, the
frequent raids by little planes from Florida, the discour-
agement of tourism during all the months when Havana
was safer than New York and Americans warmly wel-
comed—these and other factors had convinced the Cuban
leaders that the United States was preparing to take
action, and there was no reason to doubt that they even
feared the possibility of American military intervention—
with good reason, as it turned out.

Some students place the definitive turn in American

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THE UNITED STATES

policy—that is to say, the decision that we could not get
along with the Cuban Revolution— in May, 1959, when
the terms of the agrarian reform were divulged, It was,
indeed, a tough, extremely radical land reform and it
resulted in the resignation of five Cuban Cabinet Min-
isters, including the Minister of Agriculture, Humberto
Soil Marin, whose own more moderate proposals were
rejected. This was the first major break in revolutionary
unity.

The agrarian reform law, in fact, was much more
radical than the Cuban Communists were suggesting.
This was ironical considering that the law, which was
promulgated on June 3, 1959, was immediately and gen-
erally labeled as communistic in the American press and
by many American businessmen and Congressmen.

The decision was Fidel Castro's, and it was typical of
a paradoxical feature of the Cuban Revolution: Fidelismo
is more radical than comunismo.

On June 11, 1959, the day the Cabinet Ministers re-
signed, U.S. Ambassador Philip W. Bonsai handed Min-
ister of State Roberto Agramonte (who, incidentally, was
one of the men who resigned) a note from our State De-
partment. The key passage read:

"The United States recognizes that under international
law a state has the right to take property within its juris-
diction for public purposes in the absence of treaty pro-
visions or other agreement to the contrary; however, this
right is coupled with the corresponding obligation on the
part of a state that such taking will be accompanied by

THE CUBAN STORY

payment of prompt, adequate and effective compensa-
tion."

The law provided for compensation in twenty-year
bonds bearing 4l/% per cent interest. No bonds ever
materialized, nor was there compensation at any time
for American mines, public utilities, factories, refineries
and property of all kinds seized as the conflict between
us worsened. These had a capital value of at least
$800,000,000.

Fidel and his associates insisted that Cuba was in no
position to pay compensation after the colossal peculations
of Batista and his cronies— which was true enough— and
that bonds would have been issued for expropriated lands
if we had been patient enough. I was not so sure of that,
but it was true that the revolutionary government was
too disorganized and had too few technicians to issue the
bonds quickly.

A crucial question began to take shape at that time:
How much patience could or should the United States
exercise toward the Castro regime? Before that question
could be answered with a proper degree of wisdom,
common sense and understanding, history, the character
of the Cuban people and the long intimate background
of Cuban-American relations had to be studied, as well
as the phenomenon of the Cuban Revolution.

I do not believe that such a study was made or was
considered necessary. Perhaps it would have been an
intellectual exercise too confusing and too paralyzing for
men concerned with the security and power of the United
States, Only the intellectuals can safely, indulge in the

234

THE UNITED STATES

luxury of seeing both sides. It need hardly be pointed out
that in similar circumstances Premier Khrushchev would
have acted sooner and with complete ruthlessness— a
simple fact that Fidel Castro and his associates did not
seem to have considered.

However, the United States is not a Communist or
Fascist State. "In a free society like ours/' Walter Lipp-
rnann was to write after the abortive invasion, "a policy
is bound to fail which deliberately violates our pledges
and our principles, our treaties and our laws."

So, with regard to Cuba, we have been performing the
classic maneuver of sitting down between two stools.

Unhappily, we are ill prepared as a people and a
nation to understand and meet the problems that face us
in Latin America. We start with a great handicap. The
ignorance of Latin America in American official and public
life and in the press, radio and television of the United
States is quite simply appalling. There are many first-rate
Latin Americanists in our universities, but not nearly
enough. None specialized or kept up with Cuban affairs
and as a result there has been no history of Cuba in
English since 1936.

There has been no Secretary of State since Cordell
Hull who has made a close study of Latin American
affairs (Dean Rusk is no exception) and HuU was narrow
minded, unsympathetic and lacking in understanding.

One of the most frequently heard complaitits in Latin
America was that we "neglected" the area and concen-
trated all our attention and an overwhelming percentage
of our aid on Europe and Asia.

THE CUBAN STORY

There was no logical reason for our neglect. On the con-
trary, the importance of Latin America to the United
States is paramount. Our private investments outside of
Cuba, for instance, exceed $8,000,000,000 compared to
about $5,300,000,000 in Europe. About one quarter of
all our exports go to Latin America and one third of all
our imports come from the area. Of seventy-seven articles
listed as strategic materials for stockpiling in the Second
World War, thirty are produced in large quantities in
Latin America. We get more than 90 per cent of our
quartz crystals, two thirds of our antimony, more than
half of our bauxite, half of our beryl, a third of our lead,
a quarter of our copper from the area. Zinc, tin, tungsten,
manganese, petroleum and iron ore are some other im-
portant raw materials we get from Latin America.

The trade between the United States and Latin Amer-
ica, both ways, exceeds $8,000,000,000 a year. United
States receipts for exports of goods and services and for
net long-term investments are in the neighborhood of
$7,000,000,000 yearly. The figure for payments by the
United States to Latin America for imports of goods and
services, net donations and investments in excess of
liquidations or repayments is roughly the same.

It should be remembered, incidentally, that we get
nearly all our coffee and most of our imported sugar from
Latin America. These may not be strictly "strategic"
materials, but one would hate to live without them.

What all this adds up to can be stated simply. Latin
America is our most important trading and investment
area. Latin American raw materials are essential to our

236

THE UNITED STATES

existence as the pre-eminent world power. A friendly
Latin America is necessary to our military security.

These are the facts of life, and yet we see the paradox
of Latin America being taken for granted, neglected and
misunderstood. While the United States poured aid into
other parts of the world to forestall social revolutions or
communism, or threats to the security of the West, Latin
America has received only about 2 per cent of direct
American aid since 1945. In 1955, Latin America occupied
first place among the major regions of the world in new
United States private investments; in 1959 Latin America
was in last place, and she stayed there in 1960.

The pent-up feelings exploded with a tremendous
shock when Vice President Nixon made his now famous
trip to South America in April and May, 1958. Virtually
all students of Latin American affairs agreed at the time
that Mr. Nixon drew the right conclusions from his experi-
ence—that the hostility was not directed against him
personally but against the United States policies toward
the region, especially economic policies, and the favor-
itism shown toward Latin American dictators.

Among the dictators who had been especially favored
was General Batista of Cuba. This policy came at the
end of a century of policies that Cuban patriots resented
generation after generation. Yet we started in 1959 by
blandly ignoring the past.

The Cubans had longer memories. A conflict between
Cuba and United States had been built into Cuban-
American relations by past history and it overflowed in

THE CUBAN STOKY

1959, from which time it was aggravated to the point of
a bitter form of cold— and nearly hot— warfare.

The two events which precipitated an open break were
the seizure of the American and British oil refineries in
Cuba when they refused to process Soviet oil in June,

1960, and the decision of the Eisenhower Administration
to punish Cuba by eliminating her sugar quota.

The arguments as to whether the Castro regime de-
liberately followed the general line it has taken, or was
forced to do so by American policies and the attitude of
the American public, could, be endless. There is no way
of settling the issue, for these are matters of opinion.

I am sure that Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Raul Castro,
Raul Roa, Armando Hart and the others sincerely con-
vinced themselves that the United States was the aggres-
sor from the beginning, and gave them no alternative. It
is also possible, if not probable, that they were only too
willing to go the way they did and often followed policies
that deliberately provoked American reaction.

History, which ends up by holding an impassive bal-
ance, will no doubt say that both sides were to blame,
that each provoked the other, that action was met by
reaction in an almost compulsive chain or (to change the
figure of speech) in a vicious circle.

An example of Fidel Castro's deliberately provoking
an American reaction was his demand that the personnel
of the huge American Embassy in Havana be cut to eleven
persons in forty-eight hours. This was on January 3, 1961,
and President Eisenhower had/ no choice but to break
diplomatic relations.

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THE UNITED STATES

In any event, I do not see how a confident judgment
can be passed blaming either Fidel Castro or the United
States for the bitter and irrevocable conflict that developed
between us. Neither side can be absolved of mistakes,
misunderstandings, injustices and stupidities. Let history
decide who was guilty of more sins of omission and
commission. I will not, as I remarked before, quarrel with
history.

Granting United States patience in 1959, it could be
argued that the situation required some positive American
policy and economic initiative toward Cuba and cer-
tainly there was neither of these.

The inevitable was not recognized as early as it could
and should have been, and the supreme importance of
Fidel Castro was also missed. One can only speculate as
to what differences a recognition of Cuban realities by the
White House, State Department, Congress and perhaps,
above all, by the American press, radio and television
would have made. The Revolution could never have
been defeated or destroyed, as so many American officials
and businessmen believed.

In diplomacy, as in boxing, there is such a thing as
rolling with the punch. We never seemed to be able to
do that with Cuba; we just traded punches, and since our
opponent was outweighed and desperate he tried to hit
back harder for every blow he received.

In Cuba we are seeing an extreme form of the in-
eradicable, all-pervading, ubiquitous Latin American emo-
tion of anti-Yankeeism. Because so many Americans be-
came aware of anti-Yankeeism when Fidel Castro began

THE CUBAN STORY

attacking the United States, we thought he invented it.
Because the Communists are anti-American, we thought
anti-Yankeeism in Latin America must be synonymous
with communism, and we blamed Vice-President Nixon's
unhappy experience in 1958 entirely on the Reds.

There are few North American attitudes more danger-
ous or more self-deceptive than labeling all these mani-
festations of anti-American feeling, from Japan to Latin
America, as Communist.

A Havana newspaper once put in double 8-column
headlines: "HATRED OF NORTH AMERICANS WILL BE THE

RELIGION OF CUBANS."

This was not in 1959 or 1960. It was in June, 1922, four
years before Fidel Castro was born, and it was a typical
reaction to the long period of ruthless control of the
Cuban economy for the profit of United States companies
and a small group of corrupt Cuban businessmen and
politicians. Professor Robert F. Smith of Texas Lutheran
College, who quotes these headlines, has documented this
period with overwhelming evidence in his recent book,
The United States and Cuba.

"As long as the Cuban Government would meet the
payments on its foreign debt," he writes, "and maintain
stability, the United States did not press the issue of
honesty and democracy in government."

That, one might say without too much exaggeration,
sums up United States policy toward Cuba in the six
decades that ended with the Castro Revolution.

We must recognize that just as we are fiercely and
emotionally anti-Communist, many Latin American poli-

240

THE UNITED STATES

ticians, students, intellectuals and industrial workers are
anti-Yankee. The commencement of wisdom in this field
is to recognize that there are some natural and legitimate
reasons for anti-Yankeeism in Latin America. The senti-
ment is used with great effect by the Communists, but it
is an instrument, a weapon that they pick up. They did
not forge it.

When we ask what we Yankees have got that so irritates
and frightens the Latin Americans, which the Russians
have not got, the answer is that we are there and have
been there for 150 years. We are the Devil that they know.

There has been anti-Yankeeism in Cuba for a long
catalog of reasons going back to its struggles against
Spain throughout the nineteenth century. We think the
Cubans should be grateful for our intervention in the
Spanish-American War. They resent the way we inter-
vened, how we fought the war, and what we did after-
wards.

They had fought for ten desperate, bloody, destructive
years for independence from the Spaniards, 1868 to 1878.
We stood by, and sold arms to the Spaniards. They rose
again in 1895 and had been fighting hard and, they think,
successfully for three years when we decided to intervene.
We fought for 114 days with total casualties of less than
2,500 and of those nearly 2,000 were from disease, not
combat.

With the war won, we would not let the Cuban troops
share our triumphant entry into Santiago de Cuba. After
the war, we occupied the island for five years, a fairly
good occupation, but what country likes to be militarily

THE CUBAN STORY

occupied by a foreign power? Then we forced the Cubans
to put the Platt Amendment into their Constitution. Its
key Article III read as follows:

The Government of Cuba consents that the United States may
exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban
independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for
the protection of life, property, and individual liberty. . . .

We started intervening in 1906~-a shameful admin-
istration under Charles E. Magoon. We landed the Marines
in 1912 and 1917. Even when there was not physical,
military occupation there was a more or less complete
economic domination. A series of crises in the autumn of
1929, for instance, bankrupted the Government and peo-
ple of Cuba, but permitted Wall Street to get economic
control.

Finally, with the advent of Franklin D. Roosevelt's
Good Neighbor Policy, the Platt Amendment was abro-
gated in 1934. Yet, it still rankles and Fidel Castro, who
was only seven years old in 1934, resents it as do all his
compatriots.

Cubans blame us for the overwhelming role that sugar
has played in their economy, with the imbalances it
brought, the social inequities of profits going to a few
people, many of them North Americans, and the unem-
ployment it caused during the eight or nine months of
the year between harvests.

Nationalism is a powerful force in the modem world
and is exceptionally strong in Latin America. Is it any
wonder the demand for "sovereignty and independence"

#42

THE UNITED STATES

from the United States was so insistent in Cuba from the
beginning of the century?

Add to all this the culminating horror and indignity of
the Batista dictatorship of 1952-59, during which the
United States favored Batista, and one has, in schematic
form, the reasons for Cuban anti-Yankeeism. In many re-
spects the Cubans were wrong, unreasonable and unfair
to us, but the important thing is that this is the way a
great Hody of them felt for three generations.

History often depends on the point of view. Like
politics, it is an art, not a science. Whether the reasons
were good or bad, Fidel Castro, as I said before, is taking
revenge for generations of Cubans.

This anti-Yankeeism in Latin America has nothing to
do with the attitude toward individual North Americans.
Latin Americans are invariably as friendly, cordial and
hospitable to us as they can possibly be. This has always
been true of the Cubans and there was no excuse for the
American press campaign depicting Havana as a danger-
ous, hostile city, or for the U.S. State Department ban
on tourism to Cuba— except as a move in our cold war
with the Castro regime. There is no excuse now for pre-
venting American students and teachers from going to
Cuba to study the situation there.

However, nothing could be more foolish or less pro-
ductive than to beat our breasts and take the blame for
everything that goes wrong in. the hemisphere. The fail-
ure of the ruling classes in Latin America to grasp what
was happening, to see the handwriting on the wall, to
make social and economic reforms, to move from Spanish

243

THE CUBAN STORY

colonialism and feudalism into the 1960's is appalling to
contemplate. Whom the gods would destroy they first
make mad—and these people are going to be destroyed
if they do not come to their senses. We can only help them
to help themselves.

Moreover, it would be folly to ignore the fact that
along with the criticism and antagonism there is also a
great fund of respect, admiration, good will and friendship
toward us in Latin America. These are also assets that
we can draw upon. The anti-Yankeeism has a good deal of
the exasperation and disappointment one feels toward a
friend who has let one down.

Ijlistory, geography and economics have always acted
to link Cuba to the United States and our people to each
other. The present break between us cannot last. I had
occasion to write Fidel in December, 1959, when the
quarreling was getting acute.

"We were sorry to miss seeing you on our vacation in
Cuba last month," I wrote, "but as it was a vacation I
did not feel it was fair to be bothering you. Afterwards I
wished we could have had a talk, as I am perturbed by
the conflict between our two countries. I foresee a period
of great strain and difficulties which will require careful
management on both sides. There is much misunder-
standing, in the United States of Cuba and in Cuba of the
United States. I wish we could all forget the past and
only remember what Lord Palmerston once said; *We
have no perpetual allies and we have no perpetual
enemies. Our interests are perpetual/ Cuba's interests are

244

THE UNITED STATES

bound to ours and ours to Cuba's and no policy in Havana
or Washington that forgets this can succeed."

Statesmanship was lacking on both sides. We had no
right, on our part, to feel self-righteous.

It is hard for us North Americans to understand that
people can dislike and resent intensely the things that we
do or have done in the past, when we have meant well
or do not know what our predecessors did. It did not
seem to have occurred to Americans, in the press or in
Congress, that the Cubans had any right or reason to be
hostile toward the United States. We should have made
the effort to realize that they had a number of reasons,
some of them good, and that their feelings were sincerely
held and not the result of perverseness, wickedness or
communism.

'We are getting into trouble," as James Reston wrote
in The New York Times, "because we are not seeing our-
selves as others see us and not seeing others as they
actually are/'

The "Apostle" and hero of Cuban independence, Jose
Marti, warned his people seventy-five years ago that they
must achieve freedom both from Spain and the United
States. They did not do so until 1959— and it remains to
be seen whether they can make it stick.

"Colonialism," the Puerto Rican official who is now
Assistant Secretary of State in the U.S. State Depart-
ment, Arturo Morales Carri6n, wrote, "does not merely
subsist under a colonial status. Countries enjoying full
sovereignty on paper may suffer from colonialism in their
economic life, their political action or their intellectual

THE CUBAN STORY

outlook. Colonialism, among other things, is a condition
in which basic policies involving a people's economic
existence, political organization or cultural and spiritual
life, axe dictated from afar, by a power remote and dif-
ferent, and implemented by local representatives of that
power, not directly responsible to the people."

This was the condition with Cuba. In 1958, United
States interests controlled 80 per cent of Cuban utilities,
90 per cent of the mines, 90 per cent of the cattle ranches,
all of the oil refining and distribution (with the Royal
Dutch Shell) and 40 per cent of the sugar industry.

There has been a great deal of nonsense written and
spoken about the United States sugar quota system and
the "generous" subsidy that we are supposed to have pro-
vided Cuba by paying about two cents a pound above
the world price of sugar for our imports from Cuba. This
higher price was a subsidy for the American domestic
sugar producers in order to protect their internal markets.
They could not produce profitably at the Cuban price.

It is true that Cuba benefited, of course, but as a coun-
terpart the United States obtained substantial tariff advan-
tages for its exports to Cuba. Moreover, the sugar policy
in general saddled Cuba with a distorted, one-commodity
economy at the mercy of the American Congress. At best,
it was a mutually beneficial arrangement that did not call
for self-righteousness on our part. Any future arrange-
ment should be, and doubtless wiU be, bilateral in scoj>e^

Sugar was more than an industrial commodity to the
Cubans; it was a symbol of their subjection to the United
States and of American power over them. When we

246

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wanted to punish Cuba in the worst possible way, we cut
off the sugar quota. This was a foolish move, which made
matters worse for both of us, but it seemed an obvious
thing to do. It was a power move and was typical of the
fact that not only Cubans, but all Latin Americans are
subject to the ubiquitous power of the "Colossus of the
North"

Naturally, as a tactic anti-Yankeeism was useful to
Premier Castro in sustaining the popular fervor for the
Revolution and* in winning support around the hemi-
sphere. A revolution is like a fire. It blazes as long as
there is something to feed 014. Fidel has to keep throwing
things on the fire to make a good blaze, and nothing is so
inflammable as "Yankee imperialism." Jean Paul Sartre
pointed out that if the Yankees had not existed, Fidel
would have had to invent them. We have played a role,
for Castro, somewhat similar to that played by the Jews,
for Hitler.

As early as February 20, 1959, Fidel angrily declared
that the United States had been "interfering in Cuban
affairs for more than fifty years'7 and that now was the
time for Cuba to "solve its own problems."

The day before— on February 19— Philip Bonsai arrived
to take up his post as American Ambassador in succession
to the unfortunate and amateurish Earl E. T. Smith.
Bonsai was one of our most expert career officers, with a
fine record in Colombia and Bolivia. He was sympathetic
to the ideals of the Cuban Revolution in their 'early
democratic, non-communistic form. But as an Ambassador
he failed,

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THE CUBAN STORY

It was a curious quirk of history that Bonsai should
have been a direct descendant of Gouverneur Morris,
who was United States envoy to Paris during the French
Revolution. As it happened, this did not give Philip
Bonsai the mentality or temperament to understand or
sympathize with the sort of revolution Cuba was experi-
encing. Moreover— and this was the real handicap— the
aristocratic, precise, rational Bonsai was the last person
in the world to strike up a friendship with a wild young
revolutionary like Fidel Castro. Bonsai could not do in
Cuba what Josephus Daniels did so successfully with
President Lazaro Cdrdenas in Mexico.

Bonsai could see only the American point of view. The
Cuban point of view not only made no sense to him, he
found Fidel Castro positively "sinister," Fidel on his part
could not remotely understand and appreciate a person
like Philip Bonsai. This was typical of what was happen-
ing, on a national plane, between Cubans and Americans.

Nietzsche has his mythical seer, Zarathustra say: "That
is my truth; now tell me yours." There has been a Cuban
truth about this Revolution and an American truth, and
the two often differed. There was also an inability to
understand that a revolution has a logic of its own.

Governor Munoz Marin of Puerto Rico, although he
and his Government were under attack from the Fidel-
istas, warned Americans from the beginning not to let
themselves become enemies of the Cuban Revolution.

The man who, to me, is the wisest, most understanding,
most clearheaded of all American journalists, Walter
Lippmann, wrote back in July, 1959:

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"For the thing we should never do in dealing with
revolutionary countries, in which the world abounds, is
to push them behind an iron curtain raised by ourselves.
On the contrary, even when they have been seduced and
subverted and are drawn across the line, the right thing
to do is to keep the way open for their return/'

This was always good advice, but it was never taken.
President Eisenhower, himself, has given us a date when
a war to the finish was decided upon. After the ill-fated
invasion attempt of April, 1961, he confessed that he had
given orders for the training and equipping of the Cuban
refugees on March 17, 1960.

Theodore Draper reminds us that former Vice-President
Nixon advocated training Cuban guerrilla forces to over-
throw Castro as early as April, 1959. This is typical of the
hopeless ignorance of all the factors at work which has
motivated so much of American policy toward Cuba. In
April, 1959, only the worst type of Batistiano exiles could
have been used for such a purpose.

Eisenhower's decision could hardly have been a sudden
one. It may have been a reaction to the visit to Cuba by
Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet Deputy Premier, in Febru-
ary, 1960. A trade pact was signed in Havana between the
Soviet Union and Cuba. In any event, I would feel sure
that from the beginning, the overriding consideration in
our hostility to the Castro regime was connected with
communism.

The President's decision was naturally kept secret. The
work was entrusted to the Central Intelligence Agency,
thus setting in motion what was to prove the most futile,

249

THE CUBAN STORY

stupid and costly blunder ever made in the course of
United States relations with Latin America. It was, in-
cidentally, President Eisenhower's contention that Amer-
ican armed forces would be required— at the very least,
some air cover for the invading elements if they were
sent in.

So far as any of us knew during that spring of 1960,
the decisive act against the Castro Government was the
cutting of the sugar quota, which came early in July,
1960. In June, Fidel had demanded that the American
and British refineries in Cuba handle Soviet oil, which
he could get cheaper than the Venezuelan oil and without
having to pay precious dollars. Since the Cuban Govern-
ment already owed the companies more than $50,000,000,
and since the Americans and British were in a global
petroleum "war" with the Russians, it was not unreason-
able for the oil companies to refuse. The Cuban operation
was a very small one for these colossal organizations. It
may have been thought that Cuba could not get along
without Venezuelan oil. If so, this was a miscalculation.

The really important decision was the punitive action
taken afterwards by President Eisenhower. It is true that
there had been almost intolerable pressure from Congress
to do something. American feelings against Fidel Castro
and his Government were intense.

There were two policy calculations. The first was that
if the United States went on doing nothing in the face
of Cuban provocations like the confiscations of American
property, a dangerous example would be set for the rest
of Latin America. In this respect, I would say that taking

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THE UNITED STATES

economic sanctions against Cuba in violation of our treaty
obligations under the Bogota Charter counteracted any
positive effects we may have gained. On the other hand,
some of the Latin American sugar-growing countries-
Mexico, Brazil, Peru— benefited by increased or new
quotas.

The second calculation was that Cuba had to export
her sugar to us and would suffer so greatly that the Castro
regime would be fatally weakened. This was typical of
the constant underestimation of the Castro regime's
strength and the determination of Fidel Castro to carry
on, whatever the cost.

Cutting the sugar quota once and for all threw the
Castro Government irrevocably into the CommuJiist
camp. There are only two doors through which an under-
developed country can go in the present world. When we
shut and locked ours, Cuba had to become dependent on
the Soviet bloc. Without Soviet oil and without the extra
sales of sugar to the Iron Curtain countries the Castro
regime would have collapsed in a matter of weeks. With
Communist help it could go on indefinitely.

As the months passed and as it became clear that Fidel
Castro was carrying on, no recourse was left to Washing-
ton except to try to arrange for the overthrow of the
revolutionary Government by arms, which is to say, an
invading force that we would train, equip and send into
Cuba.

This seemed to the United States Government to be all
the more necessary because Fidel was in process of get-
ting arms from behind the Iron Curtain. One of our

THE CUBAN STORY

earliest and most foolish decisions had been to prevent
Fidel from getting some jet planes from the British.
When that happened, he naturally went where he could
get arms.

All though the latter half of 1960 exiles were pouring
into Florida from Cuba. It became possible to build
up an invading force that did not have to be largely
Batistiano.

The full story of the invasion fiasco requires no retelling
here. For the purposes of calculating United States rela-
tions with Cuba and, indirectly, with the rest of Latin
America, it is only necessary to keep certain salient facts
in mind.

The decision to support an invasion, as stated above,
was first made by the Eisenhower Administration. It was
a foolish decision, based on misinformation and a failure
to understand the effect of such an act on hemispheric
relations.

Every student of Latin American affairs recognized that
the era of military interventions by the United States had
to end. We are still paying a high price throughout Latin
America for the "Big Stick" policies. The doctrine of
non-intervention is considered almost sacred by Latin
Americans. They struggled for nearly fifty years to get it.
Even our indirect intervention in Guatemala in 1953-54
has done us great harm.

Of course, we argue that the policy of non-intervention
was never meant to condone intervention in the hemi-
sphere by international communism. Even if that argu-

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ment is granted, the reaction should be collective, not
unilateral.

President Kennedy also favored building up and send-
ing in a Cuban armed force. He said so in the presidential
campaign— and was dishonestly attacked for it by Vice-
President Nixon who knew all about the preparations for
invasion being made and who favored them, as he boasted
later. In any event, Mr. Kennedy both spawned the mon-
ster and inherited it. What he did realize was the danger
and folly of using American air cover and naval support.

Yet by that time (the final decision was made on April
4, 1961) only American military intervention could have
succeeded.

The most important feature for historians to recognize
in the whole sorry business is that the invasion could not
possibly have succeeded. I know of no one inside or out-
side of the United States Government who has been able
to make any sense out of this truly incredible adventure.

This is what was frightening about it. The Central In-
telligence Agency was making the most .obvious mistakes
and we all knew that in adavnce. The whole operation
seems to have been entrusted to one Frank Bender. Allen
Dulles and his deputy, Richard Bissell, do not seem to
have known what was happening in detail. The intelli-
gence section of the CIA was not in close contact with
Bender and the operational sector. In any event, the
CIA's information could not have been more mistaken.
It was an appallingly perfect example of intelligence
agents making their "information" conform to the plan
they were determined to work out.

THE CUBAN STORY

Anybody who really knew what the true situation was
in Cuba could have told the CIA and the Kennedy Ad-
ministration that there would not be a popular uprising in
Cuba. Fidel Castro still had popular support and had
built up a powerful army and militia. To cap the climax
of their folly, the CIA refused to allow the underground
organization of Manuel Ray and his Movimiento Revolu-
cionario del Pueblo (MRP) to take part in the attempt.
Yet the MRP had the only efficient underground in Cuba!

The reason for this was that Frank Bender, and whom-
ever he worked for and with, considered the MRP to be
"Leftist." It was formed at the top by men who had
worked with the Castro Government in the beginning
and broke with it over the Communist issue. They were
anti-Communist, liberal, democratic and therefore slightly
Left-of-Center. Apparently, that is considered a danger-
ous position by the CIA.

Bender would not give Ray and his associates money or
help. Almost everything went to the Frente Revolucionario
Democrdtico (FRD), composed of admirable but pre~
Batista and rather conservative men.

The folly of the CIA was compounded still more by
putting Batistiano military officers in command positions
despite what was announced as orders from the White
House that no Bastista followers were to take part in the
invasion. On the contrary, so far as can be seen, the
CIA intended to install a Batista-type regime in Cuba at
the first opportunity.

In all this, I do not consider it fair to blame the Cuban
exiles. They should not be held accountable. Their emo-

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tlons naturally blinded them. They believed what they
passionately wanted to believe. They risked everydiing
and paid the greatest price. The United States Govern-
ment did not back them as strongly as it had promised.
What was inexcusable was for Americans to accept their
information and their hopes as valid.

Let it be noted in passing that the Cubans could not
keep what they were doing secret. The Castro Govern-
ment obviously knew just what was shaping up and so,
in a general way, did we newspapermen from late 1960
onwards. When I was in Cuba in August, 1960, I was
closely questioned by Fidel Castro and others about an
American intervention they believed we were preparing.
Knowing nothing at the time, I could even deny any
belief that we would be so foolish as to prepare for an
invasion by Cuban exiles. Looking back later I realized
that Fidel had some information about the preparations.

In this connection, since I believe that the bitter
draught of this whole dreadful business should be drunk
to the dregs, it has to be noted that our Government lied
to us about the invasion even after it had started. That
anyone who means so much to the United States and to
our image abroad as Adlai Stevenson should have been
led to give a false picture to the United Nations of what
we had done and what had happened is sad to contem-
plate.

Afterwards we learned that only Senator William Ful-
bright, Under Secretary Chester Bowles and White House
aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. opposed the adventure, bul
Schlesinger seems not to have felt himself importani

THE CUBAN STORY

enough to protest vigorously and Bowles was not con-
sulted. Not a single other major figure tried to dissuade
the wavering President Kennedy.

Thus, history will record a list of men at the top of the
United States Government, all of whom have respon-
sibility in an act that could not succeed and that was
bound to do enormous damage to the United States.
These men are President Kennedy; Secretary of State
Dean Rusk; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara;
Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon; General Lyman
Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Admiral
Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations; Adolf Berle,
head of the Latin American Task Force; Allen Dulles,
head of the CIA; his assistant, Richard Bissell; Assistant
Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze; and the White House
adviser, McGeorge Bundy. Perhaps we should include
former President Eisenhower and former Vice-President
Nixon.

One can exaggerate the importance of Cuba to us and
of this fiasco to our general status. We will recover from it,
somewhat damaged to be sure. But if the most important
men in the United States Government can make such a
blunder, what protection have we all got against other
and perhaps more important blunders?

Let us return to Cuba and our relations with that
dramatic island.

The future of Cuba will not be in the hands of the
exiles if the experience of other nations, like Italy, Ger-
many and Spain is a criterion. Those who stay and live
and suffer through revolutions are the ones who pick

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up the pieces later and forge a new nation. The exile
loses touch; he ceases to be representative; he will not
have the confidence of the people or of the underground
resistance.

The country changes while he is gone. It moves on to
something else. The clock cannot be turned back after a
social revolution as drastic as Cuba's.

This does not mean that forward-looking, capable,
patriotic Cuban exiles will have no role in the future of
their country. The men of the past will go— and that
includes the pre-Batista past of Presidents Grau San
Martin and Prio Socanis. If the United States had suc-
ceeded in putting them into power in April, 1961, they
would not have lasted. They are anachronisms; they
represent a Cuba that has gone into history.

The men who might be representative of what Cuba
now wants and needs, the men who were repudiated by
the CIA, were those who had helped to make the Cuban
Revolution, who served it in its early hopeful non-
communistic stage and who want to make a new Cuba.
These were men like Manuel Ray, who was Minister of
Public Works; Rufo Lopez Fresquet, Minister of the
Treasury; Raul Chib£s, the educator and Felipe Pazos,
President of the National Bank of Cuba.

None of these men may get their chance. Social revolu-
tions normally take a long time to work themselves out.
The French Revolution lasted from 1789 to 1815; the
Mexican from 1910 to 1940; the Russian (I would say)
from 1917 to the death of Stalin in 1953; the Italian Fascist
Revolution ran from 1922 to 1943; the German Nazi from

THE CUBAN STORY

1933 to 1945. The Chinese Revolution began in 1949 and
is still going strong. The Bolivian Revolution started in
1952 and is far from over.

In modern times, the mechanism of the totalitarian
state is almost impregnable. The Fascist and Nazi regimes
had to be overthrown by military invasions. The Franco
and Salazar regimes have gone on for decades. No gov-
ernment within the Sino-Soviet bloc has been overthrown.
The nearest thing to the defeat of a totalitarian regime
by counter-revolution occurred in Argentina in 1955, when
General Juan Peron was driven from power. However.,
Argentina did not have a real totalitarian structure.

The weakness of the Castro regime in Cuba lies in its
dependence on Fidel Castro. The totalitarianism is still a
facade although it may be getting a basis in the new
unified political party. In this respect Cuba resembles
Italy in the early stages of the Fascist Revolution. Had
Mussolini been eliminated before 1926, by which time the
Fascist State had been constructed, fascism would have
collapsed.

This does not mean that the Cuban Revolution would
end or that Cuba would return to pre-Castro days if Fidel
were to be assassinated. It is too late for that. The eggs
have been scrambled. Whatever came out of the chaos
and bloodshed which would follow the elimination of
Fidel Castro would be different from the Cuba of 1903-
59.

This is what American policy makers did not— perhaps
still do not— realize. The attempt to turn Cuba back to
the era of Batista was utter folly.

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THE UNITED STATES

President Kennedy, Secretary of State Rusk and other
officials and advisers are paying lip service to the ideal
of social reforms in Cuba. All we have done so far is to
try to overthrow the Castro regime by every means in our
power short of using American armed forces in order to
install a regime that the White House believed would
recreate the pre-Batista era and that the CIA intended
to turn into a neo-Batista era.

At best there would have had to be a regime, imposed
by the United States, nominally headed by Jose Miro
Cardona and the Revolutionary Council, but actually kept
in power by American economic aid. A long period of
guerrilla— perhaps civil— warfare would have followed.
The effect on our position in Latin America and on our
relations with the hemisphere would have been cata-
strophic.

One has to end by saying: "Thank the Lord for the
United States and for Cuba that the invasion of April 17,
1961, failed!"

With the collapse of the invasion President Kennedy
was faced with the realization that the Cuban problem
was greater than ever. Fidel Castro's regime was stronger;
so was the Communist apparatus in Cuba and throughout
Latin America; the Cuban exiles were defeated beyond
any possibility of a comeback for a long time; the under-
ground opposition in Cuba had been badly weakened;
the reputation of the United States in Latin America had
been severely damaged. More capital left Latin America
in two weeks after the invasion than in the previous two
years. As Theodore Draper wrote: "The ill-fated invasion

259

THE CUBAN STORY

of Cuba last April was one of those rare politico-military
events— a perfect failure."

For a day or two there seems to have been something
approaching panic in Washington with the hotheads
urging President Kennedy to throw in the American
forces. The President wisely resisted these pressures, but
he did make some tough pronouncements. The most
important came in an address to the American Society
of Newspaper Editors on April 20 when the magnitude
of the disaster had just been realized. In a masterly under-
statement he conceded that "there are, from this sobering
episode, useful lessons for us all to learn."

"Any unilateral American intervention in the absence
of an external attack upon ourselves or an ally would
have been contrary to our traditions and to our inter-
national obligations," he said. "But let the record show
that our restraint is not inexhaustible.

"Should it ever appear that the inter- American doctrine
of non-interference merely conceals or excuses a policy of
non-action; if the nations of this hemisphere should fail
to meet their commitments against outside Communist
penetration, then I want it clearly understood that this
Government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obli-
gations, which are the security of our nation/'

Two days before, there had been an exchange of mes-
sages with Khrushchev in which the Soviet Premier had
said: "We shall render the Cuban people and their Gov-
ernment all necessary assistance in beating back the
armed attack on Cuba/7 and the President replied that
"the United States intends no military intervention in

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THE UNITED STATES

Cuba," This statement has been reiterated by Mr. Kennedy
and by Secretary of State Rusk and it should be taken as
definitive in present circumstances.

However, the speech to the A.S.N.E. contains a clear
threat to use the Monroe Doctrine if the other Latin
American States do not join us in preventing "Com-
munist penetration/*

As a matter of fact, one of the casualties of the Cuban
Revolution may prove to be the Monroe Doctrine, al-
though there is unlikely ever to be an official repudiation
of it. The Doctrine is woven too firmly and too emotionally
into the fabric of American history and psychology ever
to be thrown away.

It is worth recalling the key phrase in President Jatties
Monroe's message to Congress on December 2, 1823:

"We should consider any attempt on their [the Euro-
pean powers] part to extend their system to any portion
of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."

In this post-war period we stretched the meaning of
Monroe's phrase, "to extend their system," to subversion
and control by international communism. This has been a
bipartisan policy and has been clearly expressed in the
Truman and Eisenhower, as well as Kennedy Administra-
tions.

In a press conference on July 13, 1960, answering a
question on Cuba, Premier Khrushchev said: "We con-
sider that the Monroe Doctrine has outlived its time, has
outlived itself, has died, so to say, a natural death."

The State Department lost no time in rejecting this
interpretation. A statement was issued the next day which

261

THE CUBAN STORY

said: "The principles of the Monroe Doctrine are as valid
today as they were in 1823 when the Doctrine was pro-
claimed. Furthermore, the Monroe Doctrine7s purpose of
preventing any extension to this hemisphere of a despotic
political system contrary to the independent status of the
American States is supported by the Inter-American
security system through the Organization of American
States."

In theory, the latter statement is true; in reality the
Latin American nations have never liked the Monroe
Doctrine. Any exercise or 'threat to employ power made
by the Colossus of the North was invariably resented—
and the Monroe Doctrine is a unilateral document that
forever holds such a threat over the hemisphere. The
Doctrine cannot be invoked by a Latin American country;
we are the ones who decide when and if it applies.

When President Kennedy threatened in his speech to
the A.S.N.E. to invoke the Monroe Doctrine, he sent a
figurative shiver of distaste through Latin America. There
is agreement with us in wanting to oppose the interven-
tion of the Sino-Soviet bloc in the Western Hemisphere,
but Latin America is not asking us to lead a crusade
against communism. The concentration of American policy
on anti-communism at any price is always criticized in
Latin America, except by those dictators and demagogues
who profit by this American obsession.

If it is granted that we are within our right in saying
that intervention by international communism is a viola-
tion of the Monroe Doctrine, then there is no doubt that
Fidel Castro and Nikita Khmshchev are flouting the Doc-

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THE UNITED STATES

trine. It has been challenged before, but the only power
capable of nullifying it— Great Britain in the nineteenth
century—was concerned with trade and investments in the
hemisphere, not territorial or political conquest.

It was, however, an Englishman who put a finger on
the legal and logical weakness of the Monroe Doctrine.
This was Lord Salisbury, then the British Foreign Secre-
tary, during a dispute over Venezuela and British Guiana
in 1895. "The Government of the United States," he
wrote, "is not entitled to affirm as a universal proposition
with reference to a number of independent States for
whose conduct it assumes no responsibility, that its inter-
ests are necessarily concerned in whatever may befall
those States simply because they are situated in the West-
em Hemisphere."

This, put in much less diplomatic language, is the posi-
tion that Urushchev and Castro take— in other words,
that Cuba has a right to work out her own political and
economic destiny and that so have all the other Latin
American States. In theory we do not deny this right;
in practice we have put all Latin American countries on
notice that we will not permit any of them to go largely
or wholly Communist.

But we have thus far failed to put this policy into effect
with regard to Cuba! This is one of the many extraordi-
nary developments that have come out of the Cuban
Revolution. As a general proposition, the ability of the
small powers to defy the large, even on their doorsteps,
is a new fact of life in the world today— a hard one for the
United States to digest.

263

THE CUBAN STORY

Of course, we have not heard the end of the story.
There are influential elements on the American scene
(the whole powerful conservative Republican movement
headed by Senator Barry Goldwater, for instance) who
want to send the American Marines in to "clean up" Cuba.
We can, of course, conquer Cuba. Many American Hves
would be lost, as well as Cuban lives; the island would
suffer fearful destruction; there would be guerrilla war-
fare for as long as the American Army was in occupation;
and the Good Neighbor policy, not to mention the Organ-
ization of American States, would be destroyed for many
years. Still, we could do it.

President Kennedy wisely has no intention of com-
mitting that folly. In fact, he made a pronouncement
about the Monroe Doctrine while he was campaigning
for President which sounds curious in the light of his post-
invasion statements. There should be, he said, "an admin-
istration that realizes that neither the Monroe Doctrine
nor the old Good Neighbor policy of Franklin D. Roose-
velt, is adequate for the Latin America of 1959-60. We
need now a new policy "

The concept of accepting the existence of a Communist
or pro-Communist regime in Latin America was not con-
templated by John Kennedy either as a Senator or as
President. Nevertheless, it is one that students of the area
are discussing, and it has been put forward by a number
of European commentators. In Europe, where nations live
with Communist countries as neighbors—and between
the wars with Nazi and Fascist countries— this idea is not
startling.

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THE UNITED STATES

It may be that die present strength and influence of the
Russo-Chinese Communist bloc, which are increasing,
could not be contained short of World War III if they
intensify political and economic intervention in Latin
America. It may also prove too dangerous in present cir-
cumstances to act to prevent a Communist regime's arising
in Cuba if the Cuban revolutionaries should try to install
one later.

The moment has not yet come when a decision has to
be made on this problem, but we must be prepared for it.
If the choice be acceptance of some Communist regimes
in Latin America and of greater penetration by the Sino-
Soviet bloc, or a Third World War, it is hard to see us
making the decision for a holocaust. This dreadful choice
will not have to be made, as stated before, if the United
States with Latin American cooperation tackles in a posi-
tive way the social and economic demands of the Latin
American peoples.

Moreover, to be practical, we should recognize the
obvious fact that Latin America is too far away from the
Sino-Soviet bloc to be regarded as vital and therefore as
a cause for war. The Russians think in terms of spheres
of influence, and Khrushchev would in a pinch accept
the fact that Latin America is vital to us. He would also
understand, better than anybody, that we are unlikely in-
definitely to put up with a hostile power on our doorstep.
When that time comes Fidel Castro, Che Guevara et al
are going to discover that so far as the Soviet Union is
concerned, Cuba is expendable.

Meanwhile, this argument is getting ahead of the facts.

265

THE CUBAN STORY

The Castro regime is not yet Communist, despite Wash-
ington's propaganda, and in any event, its communistic
connections and coloration do not constitute the chief
danger to the United States. Fideltemo is what should
frighten the powers that be in Washington, not com-
munism.

We are afraid of communism, but fear is not the best
defense against an enemy. Communism exists; it has its
historic roots, its popular support and a nation of enor-
mous power and wealth behind its drive, just as capitalism
has. Communism cannot be destroyed or conjured away
any more. The United States must leam to live with it,
perhaps even in the Western Hemisphere, or fight a
nuclear war.

Fidel Castro has carefully refrained from provoking the
United States to a point where we would have had justi-
fication to take military action against him. He obviously
never had the slightest intention of attacking our naval
base of Guantdnamo Bay in the eastern end of the island
because he knew we would fight for it. The American
press never seemed to grasp this fact.

Sooner or later we are going to have to give up Guan-
tdnamo Bay because in the modem world it is not possible
indefinitely to hold a military base in a foreign country
against the wishes of the people of that country. France,
Britain and Spain were unable to hold on to their bases
in the Middle East and North Africa, and we are having
to give up our air bases in Morocco.

However, we have the power to hold Guantdnamo and
Fidel knows it, One may also be certain that he has no

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intention of sending military expeditions against any other
country in the Caribbean or in Central America; and
there is no need or reason for Soviet missile bases. Cuba
did not invade us. We— by proxy— invaded Cuba, having
used American bases to train and transship Cuban troops
with the connivance of our virtual satellites, Guatemala
and Nicaragua. We are the ones who broke our treaty
commitments and violated the Bogota Charter, which is
the basis of the Inter-American System. This is not going
to be forgotten quickly in Latin America.

Our policies, however, have not changed just because
we made a fearful mess of the Cuban affair. We still say that
we will accept a Cuban revolution— that is to say, social
reforms—but that we will not accept communism or nego-
tiate with Cuba unless it repudiates its Communist con-
nections. Since, as I pointed out before, this would be the
end of the Cuban Revolution, and since Fidel Castro and
his associates will die before they give up their Revolu-
tion, we have reached an impasse.

We can continue to argue that it is unrealistic to apply
the doctrine of non-intervention only to the United
States. It should not and must not, we say, protect the
Soviet Union and Red China when they intervene in the
hemisphere. This is a logical argument and the Latin
American Governments seem to agree with it in principle.
What they do not accept is our contention that the Castro
regime is Communist and that Cuba is a satellite of the
Communist bloc.

Besides, they do not take the same attitude toward
communism that we do. The cold war has only just begun

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to affect them. They are not in a life-and-death struggle
with communism, as we are. They do not—and never will
—accept our extreme position of anti-communism at all
costs, even at the cost of supporting brutal and predatory
military dictatorships in Latin America. They will support
us against the Communists only when they are convinced
that we believe in political liberty for them as well as for
ourselves.

We have not yet made it clear to Latin Americans how
far we would be willing to see them go in making their
social reforms. We have made it clear, by our Cuban
policy, that if we can help it we will not permit them to
try to solve their social and economic problems the Cuban
way. Perhaps there is no middle way— peaceful, demo-
cratic, evolutionary— such as we want to see. Perhaps we
will be faced with the choice of one of the two evils—
the Left-wing, socialistic, FideHsta way, or the Right-
wing, reactionary, military dictatorship way. If so, our
record shows that we would choose the Right-wing, if
only because it is anti-Communist, and would hold out
for "stability" and the status quo. Such regimes would not
hold out long.

There is no quicker or better way I know of to demon-
strate the type of traditional policy that must be aban-
doned than to cite a brief passage from Professor Robert
F. Smith's book, The United States and Cuba.

"The late John Foster Dulles told a Senate Committee
about Venezuela under the dictator P6rez Jimenez:" Smith
wrote,

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"'Venezuela [said Dulles] is a country which has
adopted the kind of policies which we think the other
countries of South America should adopt. Namely, they
have adopted policies which provide in Venezuela a
climate which is attractive to foreign capital to come in/

"[Dulles] concluded by saying that if all Latin Amer-
ican countries followed the example of Venezuela, the
dangers of communism and social disorder would dis-
appear."

Dulles was then, of course, Secretary of State and he
was testifying to the Senate Committee on Finance. This
was in 1955 at a time when Venezuela, under General
P6rez Jimenez, was suffering from as brutal and corrupt
a tyranny as Latin America has ever seen, and when the
dictator's policies were clearly leading Venezuela into
bankruptcy. Our Ambassadors of that period were in-
timate friends of P&rez Jim6nez.

This is the sort of American attitude and policy that
must be abandoned. We have no proof that it has been
abandoned.

All our Administrations have paid lip service to the
cause of democracy in Latin America, and the Kennedy
Administration is no exception. In his inaugural address
Mr. Kennedy promised "to assist free men and free Gov-
ernments in casting off the chains of poverty/' The "Alli-
ance for Progress" plan is intended to do this. The real
tests are yet to come, and they will be severe tests.

It is vital that we permit the impetus for change to come
from within the countries and not impose change upon
them, even if we could. Yet how are we going to keep

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international communism out o£ the Western Hemisphere,
and Fidelismo out of the other countries of Latin America,
without intervening? This is one of the most serious
dilemmas that we face in our Latin American policies.

If the Cuban Revolution succeeds as a social revolu-
tion, if it raises the Cuban standard of living, diversifies
the economy, industrializes, brings schools, hospitals,
homes, land to till and jobs for city workers— if it does
these things or even partly achieves them, we will lose a
major battle in the cold war. Yet, these are splendid goals,
the very goals we want to see reached. We contend that
they cannot be achieved by totalitarian methods or if
they are, as in Russia, that the price paid will be degrad-
ing. Besides, anywhere in Latin America the aims would
be achieved at our expense and would represent a grave
danger to our security.

Therefore, if one wants to be logical, the Cuban Revolu-
tion, from the point of view of American policy, must
fail. At least, this revolution, the Castro Revolution, must
fail. At best, we applaud its ideals but not its methods.
Yet we must have something far, far better to offer the
Cubans than the pre-Batista or neo-Batista alternative we
were preparing to foist upon them with the April invasion.

To Cubans, the policies followed by the United States
in the first decade of this century or in the early 1930?s,
or during the Batista dictatorship, are vivid, burning
realities which they deeply resent. Hardly one American
in a million would know about these policies or agree
that he should be held responsible for them. And if he did
know about them and were in the Government, he would

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have the deeper responsibility of protecting the security
of the United States.

However, it is to be hoped that Cuba really has taught
us some lessons, as President Kennedy ruefully confessed.
They are painful, as lessons often are.

The traditional policy of the United States toward
Latin America, it must be repeated here, has been to
seek stability, under which there could be profitable trade
and investments, safe supplies of vitally needed raw ma-
terials, political support in the international organizations
against the Communist bloc, and a friendly strategic zone
in a geographic area of vital importance to our continental
security. In the past, when instability developed we
moved in with Marines or with the manipulation of eco-
nomic and political weapons, or with both, as we often
did in Cuba.

Let us grant that it is the business of any government
to look out for its own security and economic strength.
It is even arguable, in terms of practical power politics,
that our policies paid off well enough in the past and that
they were within the range of the normal, expected be-
havior of great powers in their sphere of influence.

But times have changed. The dynamism of the con-
temporary world is turning the concept of stability into
an oppressive reaction. The ruling classes in Latin Amer-
ica, who maintain what stability there is, are trying to
stop the tide from coming in. There must be change. As
I am continually pointing out, either it comes by social
and economic reforms made voluntarily by the governing

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THE CUBAN STOKY

classes in Latin America with our aid and encourage-
ment, or it will come through Leftist revolutions that will
resemble the Cuban upheaval.

Evolution or revolution, as President Eisenhower put
it in 1960. (Incidentally he got the phrase from an edi-
torial in The New York Times. ) As a policy, it is going to
be infinitely more difficult and costly than anything we
faced in the past. The Good Neighbor policy is not enough
any more. It consisted mostly in ceasing to do things we
had no right to do. And it cost nothing.

What is good for the United States is not necessarily
good for El Salvador, for Ecuador or for Brazil, and we
certainly do not think that what is good for Russia and
China is good for Latin America.

Countries like Brazil are showing pretty clearly that
they want to work out their own destiny in their own way.
Brazil is one of the future giants of the world, one of the
countries which is transforming our bipolar world of the
United States and the Soviet Union into a multilateral
world with many first-rate powers.

If we insist that Latin American nations be like us,
copy our economies and political systems, and be on our
side against the Communist bloc, we will lose allies. We,
as well as the Communists, face resistance in Latin Amer-
ica. It differs, in our case, in form and quality from the
resistance to communism but it has a historic, persistent
base in the nationalistic emotion of anti-Yankeeism,

Yet, we have a basic advantage, too, for Latin America
belongs to the West by history, tradition and ideals.

The changes taking place in Latin America are in-

THE UNITED STATES

evitably bringing a new generation of younger, more
radical, iconoclastic men into power, men who will re-
spond to mass pressures for social and economic better-
ment and who will resist United States leadership.

History does not flow backwards, as I have already
remarked. We will not recapture the past. We will never
again exercise the degree of power or economic domina-
tion that we used to have.

The forces that have brought about this change were at
work for decades before the Cuban revolution. As has
been said, that Revolution is a result of long pent-up
historic forces and of social ferments at work everywhere
in the contemporary world, especially in the underdevel-
oped areas.

One might say that Fidel Castro was like Pandora. The
box was there and all the troubles were in it— and he
opened the box,

Latin America is moving fast, and not necessarily with
us or toward us. The social and economic pressures have
revolutionary possibilities. Our policies to date have not
been successful They have been too negative, too little,
too closely tied to dictators and to small ruling classes
who will become victims of the new social pressures if they
do not move quickly and make necessary reforms. Stabil-
ity and the status quo are dreams of the past.

We have lost the Cuba we knew and dominated, or
influenced so greatly. Our relations with Cuba will never
be the same, even when they become friendly again, as
they must.

As I have said repeatedly, January 1, 1959, when Fidel

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Castro triumphed, began a new era in Latin America. It
will be an era of challenge and conflict and danger. The
New World is no longer new in our United States. We
represent an older, a mature, a conservative world. This
is not the world of Latin America. Their world is young;
it is dynamic; figuratively or literally, it is revolutionary.

The challenge has come out of Cuba in the voice of
Fidel Castro. It has been taken up by the Communists,
but also by the youth, the intellectuals, the oppressed, the
poor, the ill, the illiterate. It is not the challenge of com-
munism; it is the challenge of people— ordinary people—
for a better way of life, a fairer share of the wealth they
produce. We, the North Americans, will win or lose to
the extent that we satisfy these demands, not to the extent
that we prevent communism or frustrate Fideltemo.

This Revolution has struck deeply, not because its
strength comes from Moscow and Peiping, but because it
comes out of the deep wellsprings of Cuban and Latin
American history, because it holds a promise as well as a
threat, because it seeks an answer to questions that are
tormenting the minds and hearts of all Latin Americans
today.

We say it is the wrong answer. Well and good! But
then, we must give a better answer. Not an old answer
for a new era.

We can do it, of course. This is still the Western Hemi-
sphere, our hemisphere. We belong. We have power,
wealth, ideals, freedom, democracy, things to give, things
we need. We must shape all this to better purposes than
in the past.

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A truly astonishing feature of the conflict between
Cuba and the United States lies in the fact that Fidel
and his associates are counting upon the defeat of the
United States in the cold war. They see us as a declining
power, approaching the fall of our "Empire" just as the
Romans did in olden times and the British and French
in the postwar era. They have no illusions about the dis-
parity in strength between them and us, but they believe
that they are riding the wave of the future and will share
the triumph of the "Socialist" forces over ''Yankee im-
perialism/*

"Cuba is just a small incident," Che Guevara said to me
the last time I saw him. "You will lose everywhere in the
world"

The danger to us in such beliefs is obvious. These
young men, after all, do control Cuba, have considerable
influence in the hemisphere, and are permitting Cuba to
be used as a base from which communism, as well as
Fidelismo can operate to stir up revolution and play the
Communist game throughout Latin America.

Whether this was unavoidable or whether our policy
blunders were to blame has long ceased to be a problem
to Washington. This is where an academic approach is
meaningless. Whatever sins North Americans may have
committed or condoned in Cuba since the Spanish-
American, War, however responsible our policies— eco-
nomic and political— may have been for bringing on the
Cuban Revolution, even if it were our fault that the
Castro regime had ended up in the arms of Khrushchev,

THE CUBAN STORY

Washington would still say that we will not stand for the
Communist domination of Cuba.

By this I presume we mean a Cuban regime actively
playing a role on the side of the Sino-Soviet bloc against
the United States and engaged in subverting and stirring
up anti-American, Leftist social revolutions throughout
Latin America. If this is what Fidel Castro represents,
then he and his regime will have to be destroyed. No
amount of sympathy for Fidel Castro and for the ideals
and genuine accomplishments of his Revolution could
lead an American to any other decision.

On the other hand, an American policy so stupid as to
seek to restore the pre-Revolutionary situation, as we
tried to do with the invasion of April, 1961, is no answer.
It would bring about a state of affairs as damaging to us
and to Cuba in the long run as the Castro Revolution,

The hope, surely, must be that the Cuban Revolution
will run a course that brings social and economic benefits
to Cuba and that meanwhile can be isolated. Cuba is a
small, weak, poor country which could be allowed to
work out its own destiny, even if its government is social-
istic or communistic. It will not subvert the hemisphere
or any countries in it if American policies are wise and
sensible.

Allowing for all the weapons and power that a totali-
tarian regime puts in the hands of a modern government,
I still think that communism could not survive in Cuba,
The Cuban people are too violent and brave, as well as too
individualistic, to put up with a totalitarian regime in-
definitely. In the long run, the Cubans will rid themselves

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of communism, and they are more likely to do so if we let
them do it and do not try any more foolish stunts like
the invasion of April, 1961. Cubans did not make good
use of their liberty when they had it, but they love and
crave liberty.

The answer to Fidelismo, as everyone knows and keeps
saying, is to help bring about the positive social, eco-
nomic and political reforms in Latin America that will
make the Cuban Revolution seem unnecessary, irrational,
undesirable and too costly in terms of human liberty.

The outcome of the cold war will then be decided on
more crucial battlefields than Cuba— or for that matter,
Berlin. If our way of life is the better one in the field
of power politics and in a material as well as moral sense,
we will win, and the Cuban Revolution will have played
a role similar in our century to that of its many pre-
decessors in modern times.

This will have been a great role, and a worthy one. I
could never bring myself to condemn it and to condemn
Fidel Castro outright for what he has done, and especially
for what he has tried to do. At worst, the role that he and
his young associates will have played, would resemble
that of the Jacobins of the French Revolution who applied
a surgical knife to the body politic, wounding and pain-
ful, but salutary.

The French Revolution was a terrible experience for
France and for Europe, but we of later generations have
lived and profited by it. The Cuban Revolution, in its
different way, is proving a harsh and painful experience
for Cuba and Latin America, but I believe that its ultimate

THE CUBAN STORY

effects wiU have been beneficial for the hemisphere. Mexi-
cans make a similar, and impressive, argument in favor
of their long and costly social revolution of 1910 to 1940.

In this analogy (and I do realize how tricky historical
analogies can be) the United States would be playing a
role somewhat similar to England's in the French Revolu-
tion. I first felt this in reading a passage from Louis
Kronenberger's Kings and Desperate Men about the
French Revolution: "At the fall of the Bastille most
Englishmen rejoiced, assuming that the French would
now take to themselves a constitution and form of gov-
ernment minutely patterned on the English. But the pent-
up passions, the accumulated abuses of many generations
imposed a less graceful outcome. Excitement in France
turned to confusion, and confusion to terror; the French
encouraged other nations to revolt, and began a cam-
paign of aggression which produced Napoleon and sub-
sided only at Waterloo."

By substituting Cuba for France and the United States
for England we do get a striking parallel, except that
there is no Cuban Napoleon in sight. Those in the United
States who condemn the Cuban Revolution for its ex-
cesses, it violence and its tyranny are like Edmund Burke,
who so brilliantly saw what was wrong with the French
Revolution and who predicted its excesses— but who failed
so signally to understand the French Revolution.

It was so much more than he thought or realized! Its
ideals were transforming Europe and did, indeed, trans-
form the modern world. The Reign of Terror and even
the conquests of Napoleon went into history— pages that

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we turned and left behind. But "liberty, equality, frater-
nity/' like "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness/*
were ideals that lived on and that changed the world,
even though in this latter half of the twentieth century
they are still unattainable ideals.

I would not try to predict what will come of the Cuban
Revolution or what will remain of it. I only know that
it will not die; that for all its faults and excesses it con-
tains ideals and hopes and aspirations for which men and
women in Latin America will struggle. However it ends—
and all revolutions must end— it will not have been made
in vain.

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CHAPTEK SEVEN

Journalism

"INT ALL MY thirty-eight years on The New 'York Times,"
I said, "I have never seen a big story so misunderstood,
so misinterpreted and so badly handled as the Cuban
Revolution/'

This ill-tempered, but carefully pondered and earnestly
meant judgment, was made to the annual conference of
the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washing-
ton in April, 1960. As a matter of fact, I had said much
the same thing as early as the end of January, 1959, to my
colleagues in the Overseas Press Club. That was apropos
of the uncomprehending way the execution of the "war
criminals" was being handled and the abysmal ignorance
of Cuba and Cuban history that was being displayed.

Nothing else I said about the Cuban affair has been so
widely quoted. It was— and continues to be— picked up by
those who favor the Castro regime and who therefore
agree with me. It was also used by those who feel I have

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THE CUBAN STORY

misled the American public about Fidel Castro and who
wax sarcastic.

I have now been on The Times thirty-nine years and
will repeat what I said for posterity since I am as firmly
convinced of it today, as I was from the beginning. I
never made the charge lightly. I am not a quarrelsome
man and I value the respect and friendship of my col-
leagues more than anything in my career. I simply be-
lieve it is important to put the judgment on record and
I am certain it is one with which future students of the
Cuban Revolution and of American journalism will agree.

By a strange coincidence,, this is the second time that
the American press has played a major role— and a bad
one— in Cuban- American history.

Dr. Joseph E. Wisan, now head of the History Depart-
ment of the City College of New York, devoted his doc-
toral thesis back in 1934 to "The Cuban Crisis as Re-
flected in the New York Press." The "crisis" he referred
to was the rebellion against Spain that began in 1895 and
ended with the Spanish-American War in 1898.

"The principal cause of our war with Spain/' he wrote,
"was the public demand for it, a demand too powerful
for effective resistance by the business and financial
leaders of the nation or by President McKinley. For the
creation of the public state of mind, the press was largely
responsible."

I am sorry to say that my predecessors in the news-
paper profession in the 1890*8 were turning out some of
the wildest fakes that the human mind could conceive
and the gullibility of readers absorb. I am not talking

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JOURNALISM

of the fighting stage, during which we had some superb
war corresponding. I am referring to the preliminary
period when the New York publishers, headed by the
young William Randolph Hearst and his Morning Journal,
sent correspondents down to Cuba with orders to get
stories about the heroism of the Cuban rebels and the
atrocities of the Spanish rulers.

I am sure that Walter Millis, in his book, The Martial
Spirit, was right in saying that much of this so-called
news was collected in Havana bars and hotel lobbies.

This was a case where journalists were not providing
the material for history— I would feel sorry for any student
who believed what they wrote— but, nevertheless, the
newspapermen made history. They provided the decisive
push behind public opinion, which, in its turn, forced the
McKinley Government into a war that need not have
occurred,

Bad journalism made Cuban-American history then,
and bad journalism has been making it again. We have
been seeing an intricate mechanism of news coverage and
editorial opinion operating to create and heighten ten-
sions and antagonisms between Cuba and the United
States and, at the same time, building up a hostile public
opinion which, in its turn, has brought pressure on Con-
gress and the White House to force American policies
into unavoidable channels.

Of course, many other factors were operating besides
the mass communications media. There were also the
inexcusable distortions and misunderstandings of the

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THE CUBAN STORY

Cuban press with regard to the United States, even be-
fore freedom of the press was crushed in Cuba.

In general, I think that this Cuban story represents one
of the most fascinating and important chapters in the
history of American journalism. It comes to me in the
twilight of a long career when I can look back on other
big stories in faraway places. I have worked in my time
with just about all the important newspapermen of the
last four decades— many great ones, and many from other
countries. I know good journalistic work when I see it,
and I know poor work.

I have a reputation in my profession which I value, and
I staked it on the Cuban story. The verdict, however, is
not one for my contemporaries to make. It will have to be
the verdict of history, say fifty years from now, and I will
not hear it.

For a very long time through 1959 and 1960, 1 felt like
Horatio at the bridge. No one else seemed to be able or
willing to present the Cuban side of the story except those
who went so far and so unreservedly and unrealistically
to the Fidelista side that their testimony lost value.

The greatest failure of the American press was its lack
of balance and objectivity. From the time of die execu-
tions in Cuba in the early months of 1959, the American
press, radio and television were emotionally and over-
whelmingly hostile. Once the label of communism was
pinned on Fidel and his regime— and this, too, was early
in 1959— the hysteria that accompanies the American
attitude toward communism worked its poison.

This was not a question of sympathy or criticism, praise

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JOURNALISM

or blame. The failure was in a lack of understanding, and
it was a tragic failure because it contributed greatly to
the developing conflict between Cuba and the United
States. In my opinion, it also helped to drive Fidel
quicker and deeper into the Communist embrace.

Fidel and his associates were always convinced that the
reasons for the hostility toward him and his Revolution
lay in the subservience of the American press to the State
Department, the business interests and in the conserva-
tism of newspaper publishers.

We are so used to a free press that we cannot realize
that outside of the Anglo-Saxon bloc of countries there
is no conception of how the press operates in our type
of democracy. This is as true of the French and Italians
as it is of the Latin Americans. They do not understand,
even when the press in their own countries—as in France
and Italy— is free to a very considerable extent. The press
works differently in these countries and, especially, is
much more easily bought and controlled by business and
political interests.

Our own press is not 100 per cent free, just as we do not
have a pure and complete democracy. Everything is rela-
tive in this imperfect world. By reasonable and practical
standards we do have a free press, and it was not hostile
to Cuba because it was paid to be or ordered to be* I
don't know how often I tried to persuade Fidel and his
colleagues of this fact. They could not believe it, partly
because they had no genuine conception of what freedom
of the press meant, and partly because they were so

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THE CUBAN STORY

passionately convinced of the righteousness of their cause
that criticism to them was immoral and evil.

The logical conclusion of such reasoning was the sup-
pression of criticism in Cuba. Cuban "freedom of the
press" was always a relative matter. With some honorable
exceptions, newspapers, magazines and journalists were
subsidized by successive Governments, as they were by
the Spaniards during the colonial era. This was true of the
Batista dictatorship, as it was of preceding regimes,

"Freedom of the press" in Cuba meant that even though
newspapers would take money from President Batista,
they still felt free to criticize him, so much so that he was
compelled to keep a tight lid of censorship on the press
during most of the period of the Castro insurrection. He
did not and could not force the newspapers to conform
to a single Government line, as Fidel Castro came to do.

Fidel understood enough about freedom of the press
to realize that he killed it in Cuba, but that does not
mean he understands how the American press works. He
always, and very bitterly, resented the hostility of the
American press and he could not believe it was a sincerely
felt, and not a directed, hostility.

He was wrong, but there was no dissuading him. My
own criticisms of the American press lie in other direc-
tions. I do not doubt that many of my colleagues are
writing what they know their publishers and readers want
them to write, but to me the basic problem still lies in a
failure of understanding.

Consider the ideal qualifications a journalist required

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JOURNALISM

to understand what was happening in Cuba and, above
all, why it was happening.

A newspaperman ought to have had a knowledge of
Cuba and the Cuban people, some grounding in Cuban
history, especially the recent history of the Batista dic-
tatorship, a knowledge of Spanish, some idea of the Latin
American picture as a whole and (this was the most
difficult of all) an understanding of what communism
really is and of the mechanism of a social revolution.

This last point is one in which I find myself in agree-
ment with Professor C. Wright Mills, in his Listen
Yankee.

**l believe another source of trouble/* he writes, <cis that
most journalists simply do not know how to understand
and report a revolution. If it is a real revolution—and
Cuba's is certainly that— to report it involves much more
than die ordinary journalist's routine. It requires that the
journalist abandon many of the cliches and habits which
now make up his very craft. It certainly requires that he
know something in detail about the great variety of Left-
wing thought and action in the world today. And most
North American journalists know very little of that variety.
To most of them it appears as all just so much *comimi-
nism.* Even those with the best will to understand, by
their training and the habits of their work, are incapable
of reporting fully enough and accurately enough the
necessary contexts, and so the meanings, of revolutionary
events. In aU truth, I do not know that anyone has all the
necessary capacities; it is an extraordinarily difficult task

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THE CUBAN STORY

for any member of an overdeveloped society to report
what is going on in the hungry world today."

All in all, I know of no story in my career so difficult to
cover with understanding and competence as the Cuban
Revolution. This has been especially true for American
journalists who were so ill qualified to tackle the story
when it broke. The problem was not that there were so
few American newspapermen with all the qualifications I
listed. Nearly all the correspondents and editors handling
the story could not fill a single one of the qualifications.

It was a story that began on January 1> 1959 and that
was then interpreted in terms of our own Anglo-Saxon
way of life and our economic and political philosophy.

One of the most difficult tasks for a journalist, as it is for
a historian trying to understand a past age, is to put him-
self in the place of the other man or of the people being
studied. The Greeks had a word for it— empathy. If there
was no feeling for the Revolution, there was no under-
standing. The understanding could—and would— leave an
American highly critical of much that was happening, but
only the understanding gave the right to criticize. Amer-
ican coverage was, instead, distorted, unfair, ill informed
and intensely emotional.

Besides, it missed the main point of what was happen-
ing. The French Revolution, for instance, was not simply
the fall of the Bastille, the guillotining of a lot of people
and the Battle of Waterloo. It was a dynamic process and
development whose really great significance lay in its
social and political ideas.

The American coverage of the Cuban Revolution con-

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JOURNALISM

centrated almost wholly on executions, guerrillas, the
seizure of American property, sabotage, communism,
trade embargoes, diplomatic quarrels, bitter speeches
and considerable attention to Fidel Castro's beard.

The Cuban Revolution has not been described in the
American mass media of communication for what it truly
is, for its real significance in Cuba and in Latin America,
The concentration should have been on the fact that this
was a social revolution of great importance. Its gradual
development toward totalitarianism and socialism is its
most significant aspect, internally. All the other events
connected with it— the speeches, the sabotage and the like
—are news, of course, and deserve attention every day,
even front pages, but these are the surface manifestations
of the Revolution, What the stoiy has lacked is coverage
in depth.

It has been an interesting feature of the journalistic
aspect of the Revolution, that the European newspaper-
men did a much better job, generally, than the Americans.
They were not prejudiced in advance, not emotional and
they did not regard the issue of communism with the
hysteria that characterized the American coverage. As a
result, there has been some distinguished coverage in the
British, French and Swiss press.

(Incidentally, I would not want to leave the impression
that there has been no distinguished work at all by Amer-
ican correspondents. There has been some, but the good
work has been done by a few and it has not made its
mark on the ^general picture of United States coverage. )

American writers greatly oversimplified what was hap-

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pening. One could always say of Cuba what the Middle
East correspondent of The Economist wrote about Iran
this summer— "Anyone who knows what is really going on
in Persia [Iran] must be grossly misinformed." We have
had, and still have, in the United States innumerable
newspapermen who tell you confidently what is happen-
ing in Cuba. They are quite sure of themselves, but if
any situation called for humility, doubts and an open
mind, it was the Cuban Revolution.

I have never seen a situation so dynamic. To be away
from Cuba for a month or two was to lose touch. The
truth at one period would no longer hold for a later
period. This did not make it any the less the truth when
it was written, as so many Americans seem naively to
believe.

In my case, for instance, a great play has been made
of the fact that on July 16, 1959, I wrote: "This is not a
Communist revolution in any sense of the word and there
are no Communists in positions of control. . . . Premier
Castro is not only not a Communist, but decidedly anti-
Communist/'

It so happens that was true when it was written, and it
will, therefore, always be true. It also happened that Fidel
afterwards changed his mind and his policies. The truth
in the late summer of 1961 is therefore different, and
writing today I would write what is true today. This is the
proper function of journalism.

Prophecy and prediction are not its proper functions,
although they have their fascination, A newspaperman
calculating the course of a story like Cuba's resembles a

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businessman calculating the market. The gamble might
or might not come off. The guesswork might be clever,
but it will be guesswork.

Nobody could have known in 1959 what was going to
happen in Cuba because an extraordinary complex of men
and forces was at work, because those who were making
the Cuban Revolution— and especially Fidel Castro— were
young, inexperienced, emotional and rash, because they
were responding to each day's problems as they came
along. Meanwhile, the United States was responding to its
own complex and powerful pressures and to the vicious
circle of provocations and reactions in both our countries.
Add the crushing, tearing, stormy effects of the global
cold war, which gradually engulfed Cuba, and you can
realize that there was no safe way of predicting what was
going to happen.

I am not arguing that a journalist should have no opin-
ions about what was taking place, and still less that he
should have had no feelings or emotions or even bias
about a story like the Cuban Revolution. This is not only
asking the impossible; it would be bad.

One of the essentials of good newspaper work is what
F. Scott Fitzgerald called "the catharsis of a powerful
emotion.'* A catharsis is the escape hatch of the emotions
that a drama arouses. But it should be a controlled
catharsis. It should never prevent the newspaperman
from seeing and presenting the whole picture.

This is not the place to analyze the press coverage of
the Cuban Revolution in detail.

One could begin at the very beginning when the Asso-

THE CUBAN STORY

elated Press, on December 31, 1958, the very night Batista
fled, sent its famous despatch telling of a decisive Batista
victory at Santa Clara and the rebels being driven back
eastward. The United Press International was not doing
much better at the time.

However, one example of fundamental importance to
Cuban-American relations and therefore to the course of
the Revolution should suffice for our purposes. This was
the treatment in the American press of the executions of
Batistiano "war criminals" in the first few months of the
Revolution. I have had occasion already to explain these
executions and the psychology behind them. The slap-
dash, summary methods used were very bad, of course,
but the reasons for the executions, the fact that the Cuban
people approved, that rioting and personal vengeances
were forestalled, that Batista had killed, often after tor-
ture, thousands of Cubans, and that something else was
happening in Cuba— a remarkable social revolution was,
in fact, getting under way— all this was virtually ignored
in the American press.

Lest I be accused of using Left-wing opinion or some
special reasoning of my own on this, let me cite two of
the most respected voices in the hemisphere on this
subject.

Dr. Henry M, Wriston, President of the American
Assembly, ex-President of Brown University and former
Government official, gave an address in Colorado Springs
on April 3, 1959, on "Revolution and the American Citi-
zen" which sums up much of what I have been trying to
say in this book.

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JOURNALISM

In a revolutionary situation, different rules apply. The oppo-
sition is not a mere political competitor; often it is the enemy.
. , . When these new governments seem to sacrifice freedom for
"internal security," we would do well to remember our own
Alien and Sedition Acts during the administration of John
Adams. . . .

It required all our political maturity and sophistication to
treat Mikoyan [on his visit to the United States] not as the
author of savagery in Hungary, but as the First Deputy
Premier of a great power with whom the realities required us
to deal. If it is so hard for us, we ought to be able to under-
stand the over-sensitiveness of a weak, new government,
menaced by an opposition unwilling to seek power by ballots
and ready to resort to bullets at the first hope of success. . . .

No one need feel regret at the overthrow of Batista. His
tyranny was scandalously corrupt, viciously brutal. Add ad-
verbs and adjectives to taste, and you will hardly do violence
to the facts, Fidel Castro was everything a revolutionary should
be: a man of good family and fortune, well educated. He aban-
doned comfort and career to gamble his life on a military
adventure which any knowledgeable strategist would imme-
diately have branded as hopeless. He lived in the wilderness,
was hunted like a wild animal; yet his own life was marked
by unusual self-discipline. He imposed a control upon his
followers which was astoundingly strict. He never repaid tor-
ture with torture; he refused to copy his enemy's practice of
killing prisoners.

If we recall these facts, it is equally clear that after years
of hanging on by the slenderest margin, Castro had a sudden
success which developed enormous momentum, and ran be-
yond his control Even so, the number of executions [of "war
criminals"] was a fraction of the Batista murders. Despite
procedural deficiencies, the revolutionary trials were far less
lawless than the midnight murders of his predecessor. Yet

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nearly all American newspapers and commentators gave the

impression that there was an orgy of blood

Is it any wonder that Castro felt he was misunderstood? The
plain fact is that he was misunderstood and misinterpreted in
quarters, supposedly 'liberal," whose imaginations should have
made them more understanding. I have used Castro as an
illustration because events in Cuba are close at hand, recent,
and so fresh in mind. Remember, then, that revolutions develop
a dynamic of their own, and no one can predict Just how far
they will go.

At the time the executions started, Jose Figueres, ex-
President of Costa Rica, was asked by a friend to con-
demn the Cubans. Instead, he wrote a long letter that
was published in the Havana press on January 22, 1959.
He wrote in part:

In my country, the death penalty does not exist, nor have we
felt the need of it in this century, by good fortune. But each
society and each historical moment has its own necessities of
survival, which usually tend to be the least of various possible
evils. In the present circumstances of Cuba, which I know
quite well, severity may be a lesser evil than impunity. . . .

No one who knew the extremes of barbarism to which the
recent tortures in Cuba, Venezuela and other "republics" have
gone, will be able to deny in conscience that the corrective
methods must be extreme. . . .

Those who today advocate that the criminals of Cuba's war
be granted civil justice are disconnected from the circum-
stances of the moment There is not the slightest doubt, in each
city and each town, who were the principal assassins, . . »

If the Provisional Government does not execute the most
noted criminals quickly, public passion will overflow, outraged
at the impunity or the delay, and then the number of dead will
be many, many thousands.

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JOURNALISM

It was astonishing and exasperating to me that Amer-
icans could not see these obvious facts. I know of no one
in the American press corps who understood what was
involved or, if he did understand, who was able to present
a proper interpretation to his readers. This was the time
—January 22— when I went before the Overseas Press
Club and first said that 1 had never in my career seen a
big story so badly handled.

The next week I wrote an article explaining my point
of view for the house organ of the O.P.C.

"Tito good and the bad make up the picture/' I ended.
""The distortion and falsity of the Cuban coverage, in my
opinion, came because the whole truth was not presented
and because a small part of the truth was presented in a
twisted, inadequate., misleading way."

From that time on I was making myself unpopular with
my colleagues, 1 thought then, and I still think on the
whole, that one of the worst jobs of coverage of the
Cuban Revolution was being done by Time magazine. I
said so publicly and wrote a strong letter to one of its
top editors in May, 1959, saying I thought their coverage
was slanted deliberately to present the most unfavor-
able picture possible of the Revolution. Their coverage
was also inaccurate, which will not surprise any profes-
sional newspaperman who knows how Time operates.
It has first-rate correspondents who send straightforward
copy, arid 1 axn sure this would have been the case with
Cuba in the early weeks, but what correspondents send
and what comes out in the magazine are two different
things.

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I am not saying that the other news weeklies were
appreciably better. Time happens to be the most widely
read of all United States news publications and it has
more influence on the people of the country as a whole
than any other publication, even The Times, which hits
a much higher intellectual and official level. Conse-
quently, what Time printed about the Cuban Revolution
was of considerable importance. This is why I feel it
requires discussion.

A delightful description of Times methods, given just
at this period— March 4, 1959— came in a speech made by
John (TRourke, Editor of the Washington Daily News.
He referred to unhappy experiences he and John S. Knight,
Publisher of the Knight Newspapers, had just had with
Time.

"I have met an astonishing number of people who have
had experiences similar to those of Mr. Knight and my-
self/' OHourke said. "It leads me to think that perhaps
we are taking the wrong approach as we read Time.

''Time lives, I find, in a higher keyed, wittier, more
brightly colored world than the real world I am forced to
inhabit. Therefore, I enjoy Time. It is nice to escape once
a week from mundane reality and gaze at the wild, im-
probable place around me, through Time's kaleidoscop-
ically colored glasses,

"Mr. Chairman, there are many forms of fiction. There
is historical fiction, called the historical novel There is
the fiction called science fiction. Why not news fiction?"

Time took its revenge on me— or did its best to— in an
article under its section "The Press" on July 27, 1959.

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JOURNALISM

<clii already choosing sides in Cuba's conflict/* Time
wrote among other things, "Herb Matthews, 59, was fol-
lowing a well established pattern."

It then went on to say how in a trip to the Orient in
1929 I **felt more sympathy toward the Japanese than the
Chinese," how I supported the Italians in the Abyssinian
War, how I was a "partisan for the Communist-backed
Loyalist forces'* in the Spanish Civil War, leading to my
sins in the Cuban Revolution. A photograph was printed
of me standing with Faustino P6rez and Liliam Mesa
( who had taken me and my wife to Oriente Province for
the original interview with Fidel Castro). There was a
sneering caption.

Allowing for the customary mistakes, distortions and
quotations out of context mixed into the article, what
might have interested Time readers was that every word
"exposing"' me was taken from my own books, chiefly
The Education of a Correspondent.

This is my main reason for citing Time, among a host
of critics of my Cuban work. A newspaperman, like any
other man, lives to learn. Moreover, he will make his quota
of mistakes. In nearly forty years of newspaper work I
have written millions of words. If I had not made errors
I would be a calculating machine, not a journalist.

The important thing is to correct the errors when they
arc brought out. Beyond that, what matters is to give all
the facts, whether they support one's point of view or not,
and if a situation changes to describe the changes. These
are basic tenets of journalism, by my credo, and no one

THE CUBAN STOBY

can say that I have not followed them throughout my
career.

Everything about my work has been open for everyone
to see and read. When Senator McCarthy was at the
height of his outrageous smear campaigns, he claimed
there were many "Reds" on The New Jork Times. Con-
sidering my record in the Spanish Civil War it would
have seemed natural for him to pick on me. He could not
and did not, for the simple reason that there was nothing
to pick on. I never belonged to any Communist front
organization, let alone any Communist group or party. I
have considered myself a liberal, and liberalism— not
fascism, McCarthyism, John Birchism or what Senator
Fulbright calls "Right-wing radicalism*'— is the real oppo-
site and enemy of communism.

During this Cuban excitement, my critics and enemies
would love to find something in my career to fasten upon
and expose. The egregious Eastland-Dodd Subcommittee
of the Senate Judiciary Committee has heard frequent and
interminable attacks on me, as I mentioned before, but it
can find nothing worse than what it would consider mis-
taken judgments.

Nevertheless, the attacks on me—and through me on
The Times— have been and continue to be fierce. They
are especially so from my former Cuban friends and ad-
mirers who are now exiles in Miami. I regret the way they
feel and wish I could find myself in agreement with men
whom I respect like Felipe Pazos, Rufo Lopez Fresquet,
Raul Chibds, Manuel Ray, Jos6 (Pepin) M, Bosch.

Pepin Bosch wrote me on March 15, 1961; "To Fidel

JOURNALISM

you are the equivalent of an army division, so winning
you away will be quite a victory."

All that could "win me away" are the facts, the truth,
the real developments in Cuba, and the extent to which
I have drawn away should be clear in this book. This
still leaves me seeing the Cuban situation differently
from the exiles, for I see what is good about it, how im-
portant it is, and I retain my sympathy and, in many
respects, admiration for Fidel Castro.

The attitude I have taken throughout often left me
standing virtually alone among the United States editors
and newspapermen. I had some precious encouragement.
Now that he is dead, I can divulge that one who stood
by me at all times was Ernest Hemingway, as did his
wife, Mary. My last letter from Ernest, written in the
late summer of 1960 while he was in Spain, was to assure
me that the reports saying he had "gone sour'* on Fidel
and the Cuban Revolution were false,

It Is not easy to be a dissenter in the United States in a
highly emotional period like the present when McCarthy-
ism has been reborn, with its special emphasis on Cuba.

There was a passage in an article by John Strachey in
the English magazine, Encounter, for December, 1960,
which seemed apt to me,

"Britain is the traditional land of dissent/* he wrote,
"of dissent not only in its original connotation but of dis-
sent itself: of— if you will— dissent for dissenfs sake. In
this respect there seems a persisting difference between
the mental climates of Britain on the one hand and Russia
and America on the other. It has been well said that both

299

THE CUBAN STORY

Russia and America are 'unanimous countries/ The con-
sensus of opinion at any one time is so strong in each of
them that it is difficult indeed for an individual to swim
against it."

Allowing for the exaggerated comparison of the United
States with Russia (after all, nobody is going to send me
to the salt mines for dissenting) there was much truth in
what Strachey wrote.

The problem was a difficult one for my newspaper, and
since the principles involved went to the heart of what
might be called the philosophy of journalism, they deserve
consideration.

The sensational impact of my Sierra Maestra interview
with Fidel Castro in February, 1957, set the stage. The
problem of what to do about it came up soon after in
connection with the coverage of the closely related
Dominican situation in The Times. Because of the censor-
ship there and the complete, brutal and tyrannical nature
of the Trujillo dictatorship, we had been unable to get
an adequate job done for a long time. Yet the Dominican
Republic was much in the news then— July, 1957— because
of the dramatic case of the disappearance of the Columbia
University teacher, Jesus de GaHndez, and the murder of
Gerald Murphy, the American pilot.

I was in a position to do the job for The Times, but it
would have had to be a strongly personalized job. It could
not be anything else, after the Cuban sensation, with my
name meaning what it does in Latin American affairs and
since I was known by Generalissimo Trujillo and all
Dominicans as the man who was writing the editorials

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JOURNALISM

that were always so critical of Trujillo. The Dominican
press and radio were constantly attacking me.

The problem that The Times had to face was whether
there were not particular cases in which a personalized
type of journalism would be of value— perhaps of great
value— to the paper. As a general proposition, I have been
as strong an adherent of impersonal journalism as anyone
on the staff. I always said I would have been content if
our Times, like The Times of London, never used by-lines,
or names of correspondents.

I was the first one to call attention to the dangers and
embarrassments inherent in the spectacular Cuban re-
action to my Fidel Castro stories. I always tried to dis-
courage every kind of manifestation, and by coincidence
there had been a big demonstration of tribute by Cubans
in the street in front of the Times Building at the end of
June, 1957, while I was away. (In 1960 and 1961, as I
have mentioned, the demonstrations were of an opposite
nature. )

In the case of the Dominican story, it seemed to me that
the paper had a remarkable opportunity if we wanted to
take advantage of it. Had I gone to Ciudad Trujillo in
July, 1957, or at any time thereafter, it is no exaggeration
to say that the atmosphere would have been electrified
The fact that I was there would have been immediately
known, not only in the Dominican Republic, but all over
the hemisphere. The Times could have had some articles
afterwards that every newspaper, magazine and news
agency in the hemisphere would have reproduced and
commented upon.

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THE CUBAN STORY

I did not go to the Dominican Republic, and I have
cited the incident only as an example of the type of prob-
lem a newspaper like The Times has in dealing with
stories which, as in the case of Cuba, become super-
charged with a personality factor.

I always respected The Timess problems and under-
stood its reasoning— and the paper respected my attitude.
There are many satisfactions in working, for The New
Yorfc Times. None is greater than the fact that it permits
a man to retain his integrity.

It is a curious and paradoxical feature of The Times9 s
great reputation that it is based, on the one hand, on the
impartial, objective, uneditorialized thoroughness of its
news coverage and, on the other hand, on the work of
individuals whose names give a special quality and fame
to the newspaper. These men (and women, too, for I am
also thinking of the late Anne OUare McCormick) have
helped to make the paper great precisely because they
possessed unique qualities. When they die or retire they
are irreplaceable; whoever takes their places may be as
good or better, but they will be different.

So far as Cuba was concerned, any news story I would
do had to have a personal angle. At the same time, the
information I was in a unique position to get, the ideas
that would have a special authority, the impact of my
stories, the fact that whatever I wrote would have a
historic value— these features provided journalistic assets
that might or might not have outweighed the liabilities
(as a newspaper like The Times would see it) of a special,
individual imprint.

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JOURNALISM

Competent men, having no involvement, can do a
technically adequate job in sucli circumstances, and, of

course, the reader would never know what he missed.
The editors would have nothing to worry about. No one
would complain about what was printed—or praise It,
cither, for that matter. The danger to a newspaper in
playing safe lies in discouraging individual initiative and
penalizing a correspondent for the results that inevitably
follow the performance of dramatic, or especially out-
standing, work. This The Times naturally does not want
to do.

The principle at stake from The Timers point of view
(and it would apply to all newspapers with similar stand-
ards) is that the news columns— not the editorials, of
course— should be kept as neutral, impartial and objective
as possible. We do our best to keep editorializing out of
the news. When a correspondent becomes personally in-
volved in a situation, his stories are bound to have a spe-
cial coloration.

My argument on that score— and I began arguing back
in the Abyssinian and Spanish Civil Wars—is that all
correspondents are human, and being human, cannot
help having a bias. If a man's work is rejected or dis-
trusted for that reason, one would also reject the only
things that really matter— honesty, understanding, com-
passion and thoroughness. A reader has a right to the
truth and to all the facts, to the best of the writer's ability
to find them; he has no right to expect or demand that a
correspondent agree with him.

Charles Pelham Curtis, Jr., the distinguished Boston

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THE CUBAN STORY

lawyer, put the problem in better words than I could in
his A Commonplace Book.

"There are only two ways to be quite unprejudiced and
impartial/' he wrote. "One is to be completely ignorant.
The other is to be completely indifferent. Bias and prej-
udice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be
avoided."

There were frequent occasions during the Cuban in-
surrection and since Fidel Castro's triumph when the
American press did not get stories because there were
no correspondents close enough to the men and events
to find out what was happening. One example of many
was the illness of Fidel Castro in the summer of 1960.
The American press indulged in the wildest speculations,
whereas anyone like myself, who would have been in
personal contact with Fidel or his entourage, could have
ascertained the truth easily and quickly.

Another important problem for a newspaper is that even
though the editors would know and trust the work of a
correspondent, a number of readers would be suspicious.

There has also long been an unresolved conflict on The
Tira0s~and I suppose on other newspapers—about letting
editorial writers contribute to the news columns. It is a
little like the problem of permitting intelligence agents
to gather information for an operation. The tendency for
an editorial writer might be to get or to send information
that would fit an editorial line.

As with all these arguments, it depends on the indi-
vidual. Working for a big institution like The Times is
not unlike working for the Government, It is hard to

JOURNALISM

assert one's individuality and not to be merged with the
smoothly working mass as it rolls forward day by day.
Yet the "good, gray Times" has long ceased to be "gray,"
except to those who do not know how to read a newspaper
or whose prejudices make them color blind.

All the same, there are, and there no doubt have to be,
limits. The Times has a style, a pattern and a respon-
sibility that impose certain restraints. And if the man gets
bigger than the paper in a certain field or in a certain way,
or looms too large on the smoothly rolling horizon, there
is uneasiness.

The maverick can be a fine animal, welcomed, ad-
mired, appreciated— but an embarrassment and a worry
at times. However, the owner does not get rid of such a
maverick; he might even treasure him,

At the height of the controversy over my role in the
Cuban story, and at a time when Americans had reached
the peak of hysteria about Fidel Castro and the Revolu-
tion, word got around that I had been forbidden by The
Times to write anything more about Cuba. C. Wright
Mills put this in his best seller, Listen Yankee. There were
many whose wishful thinking led them to believe a wide-
spread report that I had been discharged. I have deliv-
ered many lectures on the Cuban situation, mostly at
colleges and universities, and I hardly recall any place
where I was not asked why I was no longer writing on
Cuba.

The answer to that question was simple. I am an editor,
I would point out. While our editorials are the anonymous
expression, of the newspaper's opinion, it was divulging

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an open, secret to say that except when I was away from
New York or having my days off, I have written all the
editorials in The New York Times on Cuba. If The Times
had not trusted me to do them and accepted my opinion

as I accepted the newspaper's traditions and respon-
sibilities, I would not still be on The Times. But, then
The Times would not be the great institution that it
remains if it did not show loyalty to its staff, as it always
does.

Having said that, I want to repeat my point, modesty
aside. Newspapermen are not turned out like Fords on an
assembly line— at least, not the top-flight ones. They are
unique works of art, not cogs in a machine. When they go,
others come along to do just as good or better work, but
it will be different work.

The fact that my work has always been recognizably
mine has been a source of pride to me, as it has been
both an asset and an embarrassment to The Times. Those
looking back on the coverage of the Spanish Civil War in
The Times will see me— and so it will be with the Cuban
Revolution.

The criticisms and the smears one receives for doing con-
troversial work on controversial events are easy to take.
They almost always come from those emotionally involved
on one side or the other ( and I respect such criticism ) or
from the ignorant, the crackpots, the knaves, the re-
actionaries.

I consider it almost an honor to be attacked by the
Eastland-Dodd Committee, by writers like the columnist
George Sokolsky and William Buckley of the National

306

JOURNALISM

Review, by publications like The American Legion Maga-
zine and tlie Brooklyn Tablet. If sucli people did not
attack me I would feel that there was something wrong
with my work.

In my day 1 have been accused of taking Fascist gold
and Moscow gold. When I went back to Cuba after the
Castro interview in 1957 there were two contradictory
slanders being circulated in pro-Batista circles. One was
that I was being paid by ex-President Prio Socarras, then
in Miami. 1 believe the figure of $100,000 was mentioned.
The other was more subtle. It was that I was writing
editorials and articles harmful to Batista in order to in-
duce the President to pay me a great sum to stop doing
so.

The extraordinary thing about slanders of this type is
that so many people believe them, or have a gnawing
doubt that there may be a grain of truth in them. Cubans
do not have a high opinion of their own newspapermen.

Pity the poor Latin American dictatorl It is baffling
for men like Per6n of Argentina, F&rez Jimenez of Vene-
zuela, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Batista of
Cuba, who believe that every man has his price and who
have no grasp of the concept of a free and independent
press* to have to sit back helplessly when a newspaper of
the power and influence of The New Jork Times con-
sistently attacks them.

When I was in Cuba in June, 1957, someone said to
me; "Batista would gladly give Mr. Sulzberger (our
Publisher) $1,000,000 if you would go home and stop
writing articles arid editorials about Cuba/'

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Of course General Batista would have paid that and
much more if he could have silenced The Times, and it
would have been worth every penny of it to him. Natur-
ally, he was too intelligent to try.

The late Generalissimo TrujiUo, who did not have the
slightest scruple about assassinating those who annoyed
him— and he killed some men with impunity in the United
States—would undoubtedly have taken an exquisite pleas-
ure in getting me killed. It would not have paid him.

Curiously enough, dictators (and I have been up
against many of them in my career) are almost always
sensitive to criticism. As I said, one can almost sympathize
with them because in these cases they axe dealing with
ideas they cannot grasp and forces outside their control.

Those of us who work for The New York Times use
arms that, metaphorically speaking, are the equivalent of
nuclear bombs. An editor in Oshkosh or Peoria or Ashe-
ville could be the most brilliant editorial writer in the
world with the most expert knowledge of Latin American
affairs, and it would not matter much what he wrote or
if he did editorials on the area every day.

The Times is the most powerful journalistic instrument
that has ever been forged in the free world. It is not the
mouthpiece of the State Department, nor a "semi-official
organ/' as so many people believe. It is an independent
institution and those who work for it, especially we editors
who give expression to its opinions, have a sobering
responsibility.

I was always conscious of that responsibility in the case
of Cuba. On June 18, 1957, when I came back from a visit

308

JOURNALISM

to Havana where I wrote some news articles, I circulated
a memorandum to the Publisher and editors.

"As a postscript to my Cuban trip/' I wrote, "I would
like everyone to understand that we have both an extraor-
dinary opportunity and responsibility, and also an extraor-
dinary problem in handling the subject in the news
columns and on the editorial page. Certainly, I have been
up against nothing comparable in my career and it is
really no exaggeration to say that the role we have been
playing since February is of far greater importance to
Cuba than that of the State Department The articles on
Fidel Castro and the Cuban situation which I did in
February have literally altered the course of Cuban his-
tory, and the job I have just done has also had a sensa-
tional impact on Cuban affairs. As I am sure you realize,
the earlier articles and our editorials also were primarily
responsible in ending the diplomatic career of Ambassador
Arthur Gardner and in changing the State Department
policy toward Cuba. [Not for long, let me insert as an
aside!]

"I have insisted to aU Cubans I met, and I will always
insist, that the job we did was a purely journalistic one.
It consisted in the legitimate procedure of throwing a
searchlight on a situation that the dictatorship has been
trying to keep in the dark. However, as is always the
case, when the truth hurts it affects a political situation
profoundly, and this is what has been happening in
Cuba.

**At the same time I believe that because of the truly
extraordinary effect of anything that I do or anything that

309

THE CUBAN STORY

we print editorially on Cuban affairs at this extremely
critical moment, we must be very careful to remain within
the bounds of strict journalism. I believe we must not go
out of our way at any time to write things about Cuba
which are not called for by the requirements of the news
situation and legitimate comment. . . .

"I think we can feel proud of the extraordinary power
which The New York Times possesses in a situation like
this, but just because we have that power we also have a
responsibility that must be carefully considered at every
step"

So it was. As my career draws to its close, I say now
what I have said from the beginning. Nothing matters
more than the search for truth and its complete expres-
sion. The journalist can say with the Psalmist: "Ju<%e me>
O Lord . . . according to mine integrity."

The truth is to be found where the history is being
made. In my long years of war corresponding what mat-
tered, I always felt, was to be at the front, with the fight-
ing. Those who stayed at headquarters and got the whole
story could have the front page. It meant more to me to
get that one little moment and place of truth, where men
were fighting and dying— and making history.

The truth has a palpable, sentient quality when you
live with it. Those of us who lived, and felt and suffered
through the Spanish Civil War— we know what it was.
Now, they are writing histories of the Spanish Civil War,
like the superb job of scholarship which the young Eng-
lishman, Hugh Thomas, has done. He consulted every
document, visited all the places, spoke to whom he could.

3x0

JOURNALISM

It is all there— everything but the living truth. It is not
the Spanish Civil War; it is the history of the Spanish
Civil War.

There are those who are already writing history about
the Cuban Revolution, reading the documents, what Fidel
Castro said one day and Che Guevara another, adding
them together like an accountant toting up a column of
figures.

"What is history?" a modern Pontius Pilate might well
ask. Those of us who live with history and try to relate
it know how inaccurately it is chronicled when it happens,
how much of it is colored by the point of view, how many
different truths there are, what a complicated world we
live in.

One makes mistakes, but they will be corrected by time.
The truth that one relates will endure* Those who come
after cannot take from us the reality of having lived the
events— lived the Cuban Revolution as those who made it
lived it*

Ralph Vaughan Williams, the composer, once wrote:
"Whether my music is good or bad, it is always honest,
and by that I mean I could not put down on paper a line
which I did not first feel in. every part of me.*

Hie only monument I want to leave on earth is for
some student years from now to consult the files of The
New Yorfc Times for information about the Spanish Civil
War, the Cuban Revolution, or other events and places,
and find my by-line, and know that he can trust it.

311

Index

Agromonte, Roberto, 233
Agrarian reform, 111, 173-4, 176-

8, 180, 196, 213, 233
Alden, Robert, 56
Almeida (or Ameda), Juan, 35,

114
American economic interests, 56,

71, 92, 208, 234, 23(3-7, 242,

246-7, 250-1
American Embassy, 20, 49, 74,

116, 178, 238
American Legion Magazine, The,

307

Arbenz, Jacobo, 124-5
Arciniegas, German, 148-9
Argentina, 82, 90, 95, 109, 196
Arms: to Castro from U.S., 35, 85-

6, 146, 151-2; to Batista from

U.S., 38, 82, 85-6
Arvey, Jake, 87

Berle, Adolf, 221, 256
Betancourt, Romulo, 156, 191
Bissell, Richard, 253, 256
Bogota Charter, 140-1, 194, 198,

207, 217, 251, 267
Bogotazo, 139, 140-3
Bohemia, 193
Bolivia, 185, 258

Bonsai, Philip W., 179, 233, 247-8
Bosch, Jos6 M., Ill, 298-9
Boti, Regino, 43
Bowles, Chester, 213, 214, 255
Bravo, Victor, 43
Brazil, 108-9, 196, 199, 251, 272
Brooklyn Tablet, 307
Buck, Antonio, 62
Buck, Luis, 179
Buckley, William, 44, 306
Bundy, McGeorge, 256
Burke, Axleigh, 256

Batista, Fulgencio, 16, 19, 27, 28,
48, 53, 63, 64, 66, 77, 84, 87-8,
113, 138, 237, 243, 307; per-
sonal history, 54-9

Belt, Guillermo, 143

Bender, Frank, 253-4

Benltez, Jaime, 61-2, 67, 105, 152,
159

Bergguist, Laura, 128

Cabell, C. P., 172
Camus, Albert, 99
Cardenas, Lazaro, 248
Castillo Armas, Carlos, 124
Castro, Fidel, 133-83; use of pub-
licity, 16, 37, 154, 167-8, 286;
reported death of, 16, 18, 27,
31; personality (charisma), 16,
36, 98, 136, 151, 191; family

INDEX

Castro, Fidel— Continued

history, 29, 137; physical char-
acteristics, 36; early idealism, 38,
60, 78, 95, 110, 126, 145, 163,
210; attitude toward U.S., 38,

73, 84, 109, 143, 168, 178-9,
191, 232, 238, 247; revolutionary
program, 78-80; attitude to Com-
munism, 96-7, 116, 118-23, 125,
127-8, 172, 251; totalitarian-
ism, 114-5, 153—4, 197; marriage
and family, 157-8; speeches, 157,
167-8

Castro, Raul, 17, 36, 42, 65, 74,
75, 78, 99, 116, 120, 125, 129,
145, 238; attitude to Commu-
nism, 74, 125
Casuso, Teresa, 146-7
Caudillos (see "PersonaKsm")
Censorship, 15, 28, 31, 84, 193,

286
Central Intelligence Agency, 62,

74, 77, 86, 110, 116, 124, 125,
159, 172, 249, 253, 254, 257

Chapman, Charles E,, 56-7
Chester, Edmund, 45, 48-9
Chibiis, Raul, 144, 178, 257, 298
Chicago Tribune, 84, 134, 142
Chile, 109, 196, 199, 222
China, 101, 108, 150, 217, 218-9,

223, 224, 258, 262, 265, 267,

274, 276

Chom6n, Faure", 43, 75
Cienfuegos, Carnilo, 65, 78
Civic resistance, 41, 43, 61, 67, 77,

117, 210
Class structure, 95, 102-3, 106,

120
Colombia, 82, 90, 95, 139-41, 191,

198
Columbia Broadcasting System, 45,

119

Commonplace Book, A (Curtis),

304
Communist activities, 46, 51-3, 77,

78, 80, 96, 100, 108, 116, 118-

23, 25, 127, 130, 218, 223-7,

259, 275
Coronet, 81

Costa Rica, 78, 100, 124, 156, 199
Curtis, Charles Pelham, Jr., 303-4

del Pino, Rafael, 141-3

Diaz Tamayo, Martin, 48

Dillon, Douglas, 198, 217, 256

Directori® Revolucionario3 43, 75

Dominican Republic, 192, 300-2

Dortic6s, Osvaldo, 178

Draper, Theodore, 151-2, 161, 249,

259

Drucker, Peter F., 204
Dubois, Jules, 84, 134, 142
Dulles, Allen, 124, 125, 253, 256
Dulles, John Foster, 68, 71, 124,

268-9

Eastland-Dodd Subcommittee of

the Senate Judiciary Committee,
67, 69-71, 72, 139, 298, 800
Echevarrfa, Jose* Antonio, 43
Economist, The, 196, 290
Economy, 111, 203-9, 212-6
Education of a Correspondent, The

(Matthews), 88, 297
Egypt (U.A.R.), 73, 101, 122
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 68, 86,
101, 115, 160, 217, 222, 220,
231, 237, 238, 249, 250, 252,
256, 272
Elections, 40, 78, 83

314

INDEX

Eli£ccr Gaitdn, Jorge, 141-2
El Pats, 138
El Salvador, 195
El Ttempo, 148

Encounter, 161, 299
Espin, Vilma, 23, 64
Estrada Palma, Toinas, 54, 57

Exiles, 110, 252, 254, 257

Fajardo, Manuel, 173, 181

Federal Bureau of Investigation,

116, 179

FEU (see Student University Fed-
eration )

Fidel Castro (Dubois), 142
Fidolismo, 185, 189, 192, 194-5,
196, 199, 202, 207, 211, 216,
22S-4, 225-7, 233, 266, 268,
270, 275, 277

Figueres, Jose, 124, 156, 191, 294
Fisher, H. A. L., 98-9
Franco, Francisco, 180, 258
Freedman, Emanuel R,, 21
Frente Revoludonario Democrdtico,

254
Fulbright, William, 255, 298

Gardner, Arthur, 20, 49-50, 60,

66-9, 84, 309
Goldwater, Barry, 264
Gomez, Mskimo, 16, 18
G6mez Wanguemert, Jose* Luis, 43
Good Neighbor Policy, 242, 264,

272

4<Granma, The," 17, 25, 30-1
Grau San Martin, Ramon, 55, 94,

113, 257

Guant&namo Naval Base, 71, 266
Guatemala, 128-5, 195, 252, 267
Guerra de Guerillas, La (Guevara),

Guerra Matos, Felipe, 26

Guevara, Ernesto (Che), 17, 42,
65, 76, 78, 80, 99, 103, 116, 120,
125, 126, 128-9, 170, 217, 222,
227, 238, 275

Gutierrez Menoyo, Eloy, 75

Haiti, 191, 192

Harpers Magazine, 204

Hart, Armando, 23, 62, 238

Havana Post, 49, 87, 134

Havana Times, 19, 193

Hearst, William Randolph, 283

Hemingway, Ernest, 44, 88, 299

Hernandez, Melba, 144

Herter, Christian, 213

Hill, Robert C., 72

History of the Cuban Republic,

The (Chapman), 57
History of Europe, A. (Fisher), 98
Hoffman, Wendell, 45
Honduras, 195
Hull, Cordell, 235

Institutional Revolutionary Party

(PRI), 126

Inter- American Defense Board, 85
Inter-American Press Association,

134, 193
Invasion of April 1961, 194, 230,

232, 235, 252-6, 259, 276-7

John Birch Society, 100, 123, 219,

298

John XXIII, Pope, 107
Journalism, role of, 16, 63, 66, 81,

89, 115, 119, 135, 165, 167,

192-3, 225, 281-311

315

INDEX

Karol, K. S., 130

Kennedy, John F., 58, 107, 115,
150, 189, 190, 198, 208, 212,
213, 215, 217, 225-6, 231, 253,
254, 256, 259-61, 262, 264, 269,
271

Khrushchev, Nikita, 150-1, 224,
228, 235, 260, 261, 262, 263,
265, 275

Knight, John S., 296

Kronenberger, Louis, 278

La Prensa, 193
Lemnitzer, Lyman, 256
Lenin, Nicolai, 99, 130
Lippman, Walter, 235, 248
Listen 'Yankee (Mills), 287, 305
Lleras Camargo, Alberto, 191, 220
Look Magazine, 128
Lopez Fresquet, Rufo, 257, 298
L'Unitd, 161

McCar&yism, 73, 100, 123, 219,

298, 299

McCoraiick, Anne O'Hare, 302
McNamara, Robert, 256
Machado, Gerardo, 57, 59, 63, 94
Marinello, Juan, 51-2
Marshall, George C., 139, 142
Marti, Jose, 55, 80, 245
Martial Spirit, The (Millis), 283
Martinez Marques, Guillenno, 133-

4
Maixism, 126, 128, 172, 201, 202,

218, 222

Matos, Huber, 127, 129, 154-5
Matthews, Freeman (Doc), 69
Matthews, Herbert, 44, 46, 50, 133
Matthews, Nancie, 19, 24, 32
Mesa, Liliam, 22, 24-7, 62

Mexico, 17, 25, 29, 109, 126, 146,

185, 196, 199, 207, 248, 251
Middle-class, 26, 67, 187, 188,

196-7, 202, 210
Military Intelligence Service (SIM),

60, 62, 64
Millis, Walter, 283
Mills, C. Wright, 160, 287, 305
Mir6 Cardona, Jose, 98, 178, 259
Monroe Doctrine, 188, 227, 261-4
Montero, Dolores, 62
Montevideo Conference, 207, 212,

215, 217

Morales Carri6n, Arturo, 245
Morgan, William A., 76
Movimiento Revolucionario del

Pueblo, 254
Munoz Marin, Luis, 156, 191, 248

Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 122

Nationalism, 28, 79, 93, 100-1, 109,
120, 131, 170, 202, 229-30;
socialistic tendencies, 80, 101,
117; anti- American tendencies,
28, 93, 95, 189, 240-4

National Bank of Cuba, 18

National Review, 44

Negrin, Juan, 125

Negroes, 54, 113-4

New Leader, 161

New Statesman, 130

New York Herald Tribune, 46

New York Post, 137-8

New York Times, The, 15, 19, 21,
24-7, 41, 44, 46, 47, 49, 56,
61, 68, 65-6, 69, 77, 80, 81-2,
115, 116-17, 135, 147-8, 149,
183, 193, 197, 213, 245, 272,
281-2, 296, 298, 300-11

Nicaragua, 90, 191, 267

Nitee, Paul, 256

316

INDEX

Nixon, Richard M., 134, 237, 240, Prio Socarras, Carlos, 55, 113, 140,

249, 253, 256 257, 307

Novins, Stuart, 119 Puerto Rico, 156

Nunez Jimenez, Antonio, 173, 177-

8, 181

Quadros, Janio, 108

Odria, Manuel 82

Organization of American States,

173, 179, 192, 193-4, 198, 212,

213, 264

O'Rourke, John, 296
Ortodoxo Party (Partido del Pueblo

Cubano), 144

Pais Garcia, Frank, 23, 64, 65

Panama, 192, 195

Paraguay, 191, 195

Pareto, ViHredo, 126

Pariido Socialist* Popular, 51, 118

Pawley, Ed, 72

Paxes, Felipe, 18, 21-2, 103, 178,

257, 298
Pazos, Javier, 18-19, 21-3, 24-6,

42-3, 62
P&ez, Faustino, 18-19, 21, 23, 24-

5,62

P^rez Cisneros, Caridad, 43
P<§rez Jimenez, Marcos, 82, 86, 268,

307

Perez Seraates, Enrique (Arch-
bishop of Santiago), 30, 41, 144
Peron, Juan, 63, 82, 87, 125, 192,

807

"Pcrsonalism," 99, 104, 106, 164
Peru, 82, 90, 95, 195, 251
Philips, Euby Hart, 19-20, 24, 43,

63, 87

Platt Amendment, 57, 94, 242
Portugal, 100, 199, 258
Powell, Adam Clayton, 156-7

Radio Rebelde, 174

Ray, Manuel, 254, 257, 298

Rebel, The (Camus), 99

Respuesta (Batista), 48-9

Reston, James, 245

Revolution, 79

Roa, Raul, 178, 238

Rodriguez, Rafael, 52, 120

Rodriguez, Rene, 18, 21, 26

Rojas Hnilla, Gustavo, 82

Roman Catholic Church, 67, 179-

80, 197
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 101, 242,

264

Rostow, Walt Whitman, 99
Rubottom, Roy R., 72-3
Rusk, Dean, 226, 235, 256, 259,

261

Ssinchez, Celia, 60, 64, 158-9, 173-
4

Santamaria, Haydee, 23, 144

Sarria, Pedro, 41, 145

Sartre, Jean Paul, 247

Saumel, Pedro and Ena, 26, 42

Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 92, 255-
6

Scott, Edward, 19-20, 43, 49, 87

"Second Front," 75

Senate Internal Security Subcom-
mittee, 50, 172

"Sergeant's Revolt," 57, 59

Sevareid, Eric, 137

317

INDEX

Shepherd, Lemuel C,? 85
Sflvert, K. H., 185
SIM (see Military Intelligence Serv-
ice)
Smith, Earl E. T., 68-72, 77, 81,

84, 134

Smith, Sir Norman, 141, 142, 143
Smith, Robert F.» 240, 268
Social and Economic Frontiers in

Latin America (Stark), 112
Sokolsky, George, 306
Somoza, Luis, 164
Sori Marin, Humberto, 233
Sourwine, J. G., 69-70
Soviet Union, 73, 96, 1QOS 108,

125, 150, 218-19, 224-5, 228,

235, 249, 251, 260, 261-5, 267,

275, 276

Spain, 100, 125, 191, 199
Stark, Harry, 112
tSate Department, U.S., 60, 63,

68-9, 70, 77, 80, 81, 82-3, 87,

92, 116, 124, 233, 239, 261-2,

308-9
Stevenson, Adlai, 15, 105, 115,

205, 223, 255
St. George, Andrew, 81
Strachey, John, 299-300
Student University Federation

(FEU), 43, 140
Sugar quotas, 92-3, 130, 238, £46-

7, 250-1

Sukberger, Arthur Hays, 116, 307
Szulc, Tad, 197

Taber, Robert, 45
Tabexnilla Palmeros, Carlos, 85
Tahnon, J. L,, 108
Tannenbaum, Frank, 229
Thomas, Charles S,, 86-7
Time Magazine, 64, 295-7

Trade-unions, 77, 121, 214

Tro, Emilio, 139

Trotsky, Leon, 101

Trujfflo, Rafael, 140, 191, 192,
307-8

Turbay, Julio Cesar, 216

Twenty-sixth of July Movement,
16, 38, 64, 79, 117, 121, 126-7;
origin of, 21, 30, 144-5; execu-
tions by, 135, 155, 157, 160,
165-6, 232, 294

Ubico, Jorge, 123

Uni6n Insurrecional Revolucion-

aria, 189

United Fruit Company, 123, 136-7
"United Party of Cuba's Socialist

Revolution," 126-7
United Press International, 49, 292
United States md Cuba, The

(Smith), 240, 268
Urrutia Leo, Manuel, 64, 154
Uruguay, 100, 199

Varona, Gonzalo de, 43
Venezuela, 78, 82, 90, 95, 152,
156, 196, 199, 207, 250, 268-9
Verdcja Neyra, Santiago, 46

"White Paper," 92-3, 116, 162-3
Wieland, William, 70, 72-3
Wriston, Henry M,, 292

Yugoslavia, 101
Zayas, Alfredo, 57

318

(continu. ' from front

and Batki.t. was overthtxn- • i Kingly

became the subject of coalrov.. Wash-
ington, as If he were somehow pH'simally

• sponsible for the Cuban Revolution and the

'Tlancy of Fidel Castro. **I wish 1 could

it I was responsible for the Cuban

'•a," he remarks wryly. "It would

K - ; a very different revolution."

But ".:]„ , \iatthews Is little concerned with
clearing l>jr record on himself. His big con-
ciTii is why the ("astro Revolution took place
in tilt ! "glit of Cuban history and the history
of United StatoH relations not only with Cuba
but with ail Latin America, why we mis-
understood Iho dynamics of that revolution
and still iriLsunckvstand the causes and the
depths of Fidt'liamo and of Latin American
anti-Yankeeiem, why the revolution has
taken its Leftist course, why the ill-fated
"invasion" was bound to fail, the relationship
of Castroism to communism, and so on.

It is high time, Mr. Matthews says in
effect, for the "Colossus of the North" to
wise its estimate of the forces at work
among its neighbors to the south. And he
quotes a leading Latin Americanist, Professor
K. H. Silvert: "Fidelismo challenges the
structure of the established Latin American
universe, its distribution of economic, social
and political power, its accommodation with
the Church, its set of relationships between
the person and the world™ in short, its total
self- conception.''

**I would not try to predict," Mr. Matthews
concludes, "what will come of the Cuban
Revolution or what will remain of il i only
know that it will not die; that for all its faults
and excesses It contains Ideals and hopes and
aspirations for which men and women In
Latin America will struggle. However It ends
— and all revolutions must end — it will not
have been made In vain."

2/5 Z'oHfe Avenue South, New York 3

MIINTEDIN IKS. A,

128530

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